Children of Eternity Omnibus Page 21

  Safes were used to protect valuable items or documents from theft or natural disasters. Why would Pryde need a safe? The only other people on Eternity had been the children, Miss Brigham, and Reverend Crane. The latter was the most likely reason for the safe. Despite the terrible things he had done, Reverend Crane did have his own warped sense of morality. Whatever Pryde kept in the safe, it was probably something he didn’t want the reverend to find.

  Samantha wiped the last tears from her eyes and then crawled over to the safe. She ran her hand along the surface of it until she got to the silver handle along the side. She yanked the handle; it didn’t budge. That came as no surprise to her. She had to find some way to get the safe open; Pryde might have kept something about her past in the safe. He might have kept something about all their pasts in the safe, perhaps to use as blackmail against Reverend Crane should he ever need the leverage.

  She looked around the room, but didn’t see anything that might help her get the safe open. It wasn’t like Pryde kept dynamite or C4 down here. Samantha rubbed her head, wondering how she knew about explosives like that. She would have to worry about that later.

  In the meantime she had other problems. Samantha closed her eyes to think it over. Her body moved of its own free will, leaning until her head was pressed against the cold metal of the safe. She brushed hair back from her left ear and then rested it against the safe. Her right hand began to fiddle with the knob on the safe.

  She still didn’t understand what she was doing, but something told her she had the right idea. Her hand moved the knob back and forth slowly while she continued to listen for something. After several minutes of fiddling around with the knob, she finally heard a heavy click.

  Samantha opened her eyes, coming out of the trance. This had happened to her before, in particular when she had to fight. It was as if someone else possessed her body, the person she had been resurfacing for just a few moments to take control of her. The moments never lasted long enough for her to remember anything about that past.

  Still in a daze, she reached for the handle again. This time the safe yawned open with a creak after at least five years of inactivity. As she pushed the door back, tears bubbled up in her eyes again.

  Before he had died, Reverend Crane had told her on the mainland she had been an awful person, a thief and a murderer. He claimed that was why he had brought her here, so she might be “purified” by The Way. Samantha hadn’t believed him then, but staring at the safe, she began to have her doubts. Who else but a thief would know how to unlock a safe without knowing the combination? And if the reverend had been right about that, then perhaps he had been right about everything.

  She tried to shake these thoughts away. She remembered the last five years on Eternity. She hadn’t stolen so much as a crust of bread during that time. She had been good and responsible, Miss Brigham’s best helper. Whatever Reverend Crane had given her it couldn’t have changed who she was inside, could it?

  Once her latest batch of tears had faded into hiccups again, Samantha began to look through the contents of the safe. It didn’t take long for her to understand Pryde hadn’t hidden any kind of blackmail in here. Instead, she saw boxes full of jewelry, coins, and even a container of gold teeth. Pryde had taken all of this from his victims, no doubt saving it to fund his adventures on the mainland. She again felt a sick feeling in her stomach at this thought.

  As with the clothes, the coins in the safe dated from different eras. Samantha pulled out a misshaped gold coin with the crude profile of a man on it. Someone had scratched ‘1642’ into the coin. That had been over three hundred fifty years ago! The most recent coin was a silver one—a quarter, her mind recalled—dated from 1999. She ran the grooved edges of the coin between her fingers. Like the ancient coin, the quarter had a profile of a man on the front. On the back she saw the words, “United States of America.”

  Those words seemed very familiar to her. She must have come from the United States of America. Pryde had taken her from there and brought her here. She tucked the quarter into a pocket of her jeans to study it later.

  At the top of a box near the front of the safe, she found something unusual. It was a chain made not of silver like some of the coins but a dull metal like the safe itself. A pendant shaped like half a heart cut in broken edges down the middle and made of the same metal hung from the chain. She turned the pendant over to see the words ‘BE FRIE FOR’ carved into the metal. Be Frie For? What did that mean? Was it some other language?

  She ran her hand along the ragged edge of the heart, seeing a chain like this in her mind. A little girl with brown skin and black hair obscuring her face holds out the necklace. “You put it with mine,” she mews, her voice like a cat’s purr.

  The little girl holds up the missing half of the necklace that says, ‘ST NDS EVER.’ She drapes this over her neck and then the other half over Samantha’s. “Best Friends Forever,” the girl says.

  This is mine, Samantha thought. Pryde took it from her the day he captured her. Samantha scoured the rest of the safe without finding the other half. That meant the little girl with the wild black hair hadn’t been one of Pryde’s victims. She was still alive somewhere with the missing piece to the necklace, and Samantha’s life.

  With tears in her eyes, Samantha donned the necklace. She left the rest of the jewelry in the safe, not wanting to desecrate the dead any further. She closed the safe, the door ringing like a church bell, a funeral bell.

  Samantha searched the rest of the room without finding anything that brought back any memories. By the time she finished, her stomach churned with nausea again. She staggered out of the room and searched for a place to throw up. She finally knelt in a corner and spewed a stream of yellow bile, having nothing in her stomach to throw up.

  For a minute she remained on her knees, panting from the effort. Then she wiped her mouth with the sleeve of the jacket. She made her way unsteadily back over to the pile of clothes. A stomach cramp sent her tumbling into the pile.

  She closed her eyes. She just needed some sleep. Then she would feel better. A little rest and then she could try to sneak back into the village to get some supplies. Then she would go back to the United States, where her family had lived; where some of them still might be waiting for her.

  ***

  Samantha had picked the bed nearest the window and the air conditioner. Light trickles through cracks in the vertical blinds to fall onto the paisley motel bedspread. When she peels the bedspread away, Samantha can’t put her hands to her mouth in time to suppress the scream.

  Blood. A smear of red against the white sheets on the bed, against the white hem of her nightgown, and against the white seat of her panties. She sticks a hand between her legs, her fingers coming back stained red like everything else.

  “Oh my God!” she screams. She races into the bathroom, searching for a first aid kit or a Band-Aid or something to staunch the bleeding before she passes out.

  As she frantically ransacks the bathroom, she hears her mother ask, “Honey, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  Samantha scurries into a crack between the toilet and bathtub. “Stay away from me! Don’t touch me!”

  Mom ignores her protests, squatting down in front of her and brushing hair from Samantha’s face. “Oh honey, there’s nothing to worry about. Everything will be fine.”

  “No it won’t. I’m bleeding to death!”

  Mom laughs at this. “Sweetie, you’re not bleeding to death. You’re having your period.”

  “My what?”

  “It’s something special that happens to girls when they get about your age. It means you’re becoming a woman.”

  “I am?”

  “That’s right, honey. Your body is going through a lot of changes now. It’s all part of growing up.” Mom takes Samantha’s hand, pulls her to her feet. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner. I guess I didn’t think it would happen so soon.” Mom begins to cry; Samantha joins in.

 
They weep in each other’s arms for a few minutes, though Samantha isn’t quite sure why. Then Mom begins to run warm water into the bathtub. Mom said Samantha was growing up, yet she bathed Samantha in a way she hadn’t in years. As Mom wipes the blood off Samantha’s thighs, she explains the importance of periods to having babies.

  After the bath, Mom leads Samantha back into the motel room, where she finds Dad putting clean sheets on the bed. Mom steers Samantha over to the desk, pulling out a pad that looks like a miniature diaper. She instructs Samantha on how to use the sanitary napkin.

  The napkin feels like a diaper between her legs. She feels even more like a baby when Mom helps her dress and then tucks her into the motel bed, kissing her on the forehead. Dad does the same; he looks ready to cry himself.

  “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll be right here when you wake up,” Mom says.

  Hours later, the desert rolls past Samantha’s window. She leans against the window, taking in the empty asphalt, sparse vegetation, and barren hills. This familiar landscape has never before looked so desolate to her before. Never has she felt so much at home.

  “Are you all right, honey?” Mom asks.

  “I’m fine,” Samantha says. This is a lie. She still feels feverish and sore. More than anything, she wants to sleep for the next two days and wake up feeling like she did before this morning. But she couldn’t, not now or ever.

  In the seat next to her, the giant Minnie Mouse Dad bought for her is buckled up like a fourth passenger in the car. Samantha had protested she was too big for stuffed toys anymore, but Dad insisted on buying it for her anyway. She dragged Minnie around for the rest of the day, pretending it was her little sister.

  She uses her sister now for a pillow, resting her head on Minnie’s pink-polka-dot stomach. After she closes her eyes, she feels Mom drape her jacket across Samantha’s body. Mom brushes hair from Samantha’s cheek; Samantha can feel Mom’s eyes watching her like when she was a little kid.

  “The kid’s had a tough day,” Dad says.

  When she opens her eyes again, the sky has turned to twilight shades of orange, pink, and blue outside. A few more hours and they will be home, but home will never be the same to her anymore. She left as a child and will return a woman.

  “Are you getting hungry back there, kiddo?” Dad asks.

  “I’m fine,” she says again.

  Dad looks over at Mom. “Well, I have to stretch my legs.”

  “We better turn off here. There’s not another exit for thirty miles,” Mom says, looking at the map. No matter the situation, Mom always is organized. She’s probably already memorized the guidebook to know where and what they should eat.

  Dad pulls off at the next exit consisting only of a truck stop. Rows of tractor-trailers sit in the rear of the parking lot. Mom cringes when they pass a potbellied trucker wearing a stained shirt. “Time for some local color,” Dad says. He parks with the handful of other cars near the front of the truck stop.

  Samantha puts on Mom’s jacket before she gets out of the car, the oversized sleeves making her feel like a kid again for a moment. She doesn’t get far before Mom throws an arm over her shoulder.

  “Stay close, young lady. I don’t want you wandering off and getting lost out here. You’ll get eaten by a coyote.”

  “Mom, I will not. You worry too much.”

  Mom’s eyes start to water. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m going to use the little girl’s room. Find us a nice table.” Mom hurries away, leaving Samantha and her father to walk through the truck stop’s gift shop and its rows of T-shirts, bumper stickers, and shot glasses. The rest of their trip Dad had stopped at such places to examine the merchandise and buy some worthless trinket. This time he breezes through to the restaurant without looking at anything.

  The waitress leads them to a vinyl booth patched with duct tape and hands them menus stained with half the items listed. “So, are you ready to go home?” Dad asks.

  “Not really,” Samantha says.

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good.” They study their menus in silence, as if wrestling with a difficult choice. Samantha wonders what has gotten into her parents. She thinks back to the scene in the motel this morning. That must be it.

  Mom sits down at the table, makeup blotchy around her eyes. Samantha wishes she could wear makeup, but Mom won’t let her until she’s sixteen. “Why sixteen?” Samantha always asked her. Mom never gave her any specific reason, just the old stand-by, “Because I said so.”

  “What are you two going to order?” Mom asks, trying now to sound cheerful. “I think I’ll just have a salad.”

  “This jalapeno cheeseburger sounds good,” Dad says. “What about you, kiddo? A porterhouse steak, right?”

  She puts her hand to her stomach, the nausea from earlier returning. “I’ll have a salad too,” she says.

  They give their order to the waitress and then Dad reaches over to take Mom’s hand in his. “Honey, we’ve got something important to tell you,” Dad says. “We knew how much you’ve been looking forward to this vacation so we didn’t want to distract you and we weren’t entirely sure until this morning. No need to get your hopes up—”

  “What your father is trying to say is that we called Dr. Vargas this morning for some test results and—” Mom stops to take a deep breath and to squeeze Dad’s hand. “And it turns out I’m pregnant. You’re going to have a baby sister or brother.”

  “Oh wow, really? I don’t believe it!” She lunges across the table to hug Mom, not caring what anyone else in the restaurant thinks. After all these years, she is finally going to have a little sister or brother.

  “Thank you, honey. We were a little worried you might not want one after being an only child for so long,” Mom says.

  “Of course I want a sister. Or a brother. Hopefully a sister. Do you think she’ll look like Mom and I or more like Dad? Can I help you take care of her? I know you think I’m a little kid, but I take care of Mrs. Horning’s kids all the time. They’re not much older than babies.”

  “We’ll talk about it when we get home,” Mom says.

  “What about her room? Are you going to put her in the guest bedroom? We’ll have to get rid of that gross brown wallpaper in there. Can we paint the baby’s room pink? It would look so cute. And if there’s any paint left can we paint my room too? That balloon wallpaper is for babies. I should really have something more grown-up now.” Samantha chatters on like this for the rest of dinner, not touching her food until Mom commands her to eat something.

  By the time they get back to the car, Samantha’s exhaustion returns. “I’m really happy for you, Mom,” she says.

  “Thank you, honey. This baby’s lucky to get you for a sister.” Mom kisses her on the forehead. Any other time Samantha would have blushed with embarrassment, but right now she doesn’t mind.

  Samantha settles onto her seat next to Minnie, no longer concerned with the landscape outside. She has more important issues on her mind now. A baby sister. Too bad by the time her sister starts kindergarten Samantha will be in college. They wouldn’t have much time together, but Samantha would make it count. She looks over at Minnie and smiles. Now she knows where to put the stuffed mouse.

  “Not much farther,” Dad says. “We’re almost home.”

  Samantha drifts off to sleep beneath Mom’s jacket. She awakens to a flash of white light. A second later she hears a screech followed by a sharp crack. The car’s horn sounds. She manages to lean forward to see her father slumped over the steering wheel, his bloodstained head against the horn. Next to him, Mom is doubled over and unmoving.

  Samantha takes off her seatbelt and leans over the seat to shake her parents. Neither of them moves. “Mom? Dad?” she asks repeatedly, but receives no answer. She collapses back onto her seat, her entire body suddenly numb.

  She remains like this until her door opens. A sheriff’s deputy leans in. “Are you hu
rt, little girl?” Samantha shakes her head. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  He starts to pull her out of the car, but she claws and bites at him, fighting to stay with her parents. She can’t leave them. She can’t.

  The deputy succeeds in getting her from the car and then she sees the black pick-up fused with her father’s Impala. The driver of the pick-up is handcuffed by another deputy and led towards a cruiser.

  Samantha stares at the man with hatred burning in her heart. She wants to break away from the deputy to spit in this man’s face, to scream at him, kick and punch him. She wants to kill him for what he’s done to her parents—and her little sister still in Mom’s stomach.

  The deputy tightens his grip on her shoulders. “It’s all right, sweetheart. He’s going to jail,” he says. He leads Samantha away to a waiting ambulance.

  A paramedic drapes a blanket over her shoulders and tries to ask her questions, but she doesn’t say anything. She can only watch as firemen cut open the Impala to remove her parents from the vehicle. “Don’t worry, honey, we’re going to take good care of you. You’re going to be just fine.” The paramedic says as his partner pulls a blanket over Mom’s face.

  Chapter 12: Shipwreck

  When Samantha woke up, she looked around her for the car, the paramedics, and her parents. “Mom? Dad?” she called out in a hoarse voice. When she heard nothing but her own voice echoing, her mind began to return to the present.

  They were dead. Both of them. Her parents had died on the mainland, in the desert. Pryde hadn’t killed her mother and abducted Samantha; her mother had been dead before that. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not fair.”

  For five years she had dreamed of going to the mainland to find her parents. Sometimes that was the only thought that had kept her going. Now after five years of hoping, wishing, and dreaming, she learned they were both dead.

  “It’s not fair!” she screamed. She scrambled to her feet and for emphasis she kicked the pile of clothes. When that didn’t sate her appetite for destruction, she kicked the rest of the piles. Then she grabbed a dress out of the pile and tore it in half. She threw the pieces aside and then reached for another dress.