Come Little Children Read Online Free PDF Page B

and cabinets with the same white-on-wood finish found in Protestant kitchens and wartime medical clinics. There wasn’ta mote of color in the whole place. It actually
felt
desaturated, as if everything but gray had been hosed down the drain in the center of the room’s floor.
    It might not have been the most modern facility Camilla had ever laid eyes on, but it was here and it was real, making the whole arrival feel real too.
    And then she saw it.
    In the far corner, lying across a table, was Camilla’s first body in the Vincents’ embalming room.
    It was a man. His eyelids were already closed—either sealed together with eye caps or glued shut—and his arms were stiff at his sides. She walked closer, her eagerness getting the best of her, until she was hovering directly over top.
    Her first impression was that he was poorly dressed for a corpse. His dress shoes weren’t polished and his white shirt was partially untucked in the front; he was young too, maybe thirty-seven or thirty-eight, and there were no signs of trauma to his head or neck, nor any visible wounds. Personal hygiene clearly hadn’t been his life’s priority, as evidenced by his half-inch fingernails and wiry nose hairs, but at least he had good skin for a desiccate corpse.
    This is too cool
.
    She reached down to tuck the man’s dishevelled shirt into his pants, but as soon as her fingers slipped inside the crotch, the man’s eyes popped open and he let out a murderous scream.
    Camilla’s eyes popped too, and she stumbled into the cart behind her. There was a loud crash as the cart smashed to the floor and metal and glass went flying across the linoleum. The man hopped off the far end of the table and lunged for a twelve-inch bone saw, holding it out in front of him.
    “Molester! Help!”
    “I-I’m
…
” Camilla coughed as she straightened up, trying to regain her bearings. “I’m not a—”
    “Stay back! One step—
one step
, and I’ll hack that hand clean off.”
    “But—”
    “Molester!”
    The fluorescents in the room flashed on. Moira was standing in the doorway with the box of human remains from the funeral coach on a gurney behind her.
    “What in the seventh circle of hell is going on in here?”
    “Moira,” the man said, his saw level with Camilla’s chest. “I’ve been violated.”
    “I thought he was dead,” Camilla said.
    The man’s mouth fell open. “Necrophilia? In
my
embalming room? Abomination!”
    “Stop,” Moira said. “Maddock, this is our new assistant, Camilla Carleton. Carleton, Maddock Vincent, though I assume you already caught his name from his license or passport or some private phone call you’ve tapped—no matter. Come, there’s work.”
    Camilla hugged her bony arms and tried to make herself as small as possible for the second time that night. She watched Maddock set his saw on the counter and thought he still looked quite frazzled, like a Chihuahua trembling in a thunderstorm.
    Moira rolled the gurney into the middle of the embalming room and picked a scalpel off the floor, slicing through the cords that cinched the cardboard together with three fluid swipes, while Maddock rushed forward and started peeling the flaps apart to reveal a long rosewood casket resting inside. Camilla orbited, observing.
    “I’m not familiar with your program,” Moira said over her shoulder, “but around here, everyone pitches in.”
    Unsure if that was a cue to jump in or a segue to a job description, Camilla stepped up and started helping remove the cardboard strips.
    “We each have our proclivities, of course. Maddock is our chief embalmer. Brutus and my sons do most of the removal calls; Jasper and Laura handle paperwork and bookkeeping. But we’re a busy funeral home. Everyone shares the work, so until we find the right fit for you, you’ll be used to fill the family gaps, so to speak.”
    There was a loud click as Moira unclasped one of the casket’s latches.
    Another click. Then another. And