Suffer the Children

by John Saul

  Jack examined his hand carefully, then closed it and threw it in. “Not when fourth best is a four from a seven,” he said. “You underbid. Score yourself forty, and we’ll count ourselves lucky.”

  Carl Stevens dealt the next hand, and as he began sorting it he glanced up at the ceiling.

  “Mighty quiet up there,” he observed. “I didn’t know three children could be that quiet Knock on wood.” He finished sorting his cards, and tried to keep his glee from showing.

  “Two no-trump,” he announced, and was pleased to hear a groan from the women.

  Upstairs, the three children sat on the floor of the playroom, finishing a game of Monopoly that Sarah had won, primarily because both Jeff and Elizabeth, taking turns playing on her behalf, had made good deals for her. For her part, Sarah was sitting quietly, staring at the Monopoly board and occasionally picking up one of the pieces to examine it carefully before putting it down on the exact spot from which she had picked it up.

  “She’s just lucky, that’s all,” Jeff commented as he shoved the last of his money over to Sarah. Sarah, as if sensing somehow that the game was over, suddenly swept the board clean. Elizabeth began picking up the scattered money and sorting it out again. She smiled at Jeff.

  “She does this all the time,” Elizabeth said. “Whenever I play a game with her, she always wins. Then she dumps it.” Elizabeth did not add that the only active part Sarah ever took in any of the games was in the dumping. She was sure Jeff understood that without being told. “Have you ever seen a Ouija board?” she asked him.

  “You mean one of those things that’s supposed to tell your fortune?”

  “They don’t really tell your fortune. You’re supposed to be able to talk to spirits with them.”

  “I don’t believe in spirits,” Jeff said. Then: “Do you have one?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I found it up in the attic. Sarah and I play with it all the time. Want to try it?”

  “Sure,” Jeff said. “Why not?”

  Elizabeth finished packing the Monopoly set in its box, then pulled out the Ouija board. She set it on the floor between Jeff and herself, then called to Sarah, who drifted back from the window she had been looking vacantly out of. Silently Sarah sat down on the floor and rested her fingers on the indicator.

  “What do we do?” Jeff asked.

  “It’s easy,” Elizabeth said. “Just put your fingers on that thing, the same way as Sarah, and then ask a question. Pretty soon it starts moving.”

  “All by itself?” Jeff said skeptically.

  “Sure. Come on. Let’s try it.”

  She put her fingers on the indicator, and after a moment, and feeling a bit silly, Jeff did likewise.

  “Is anybody there?” Elizabeth intoned. For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Jeff was about to give it up as stupid when he thought he felt a vibration under his fingers. Then the indicator moved. It slid across the board and stopped at the “B.”

  “Did you do that?” he said to Elizabeth.

  She shook her head. “Shh. You shouldn’t talk.”

  Jeff’s lips tightened, and he felt the indicator try to move again. He pressed down, trying to immobilize it. He could feel it straining under his fingertips and glanced surreptitiously at Elizabeth to see if she was trying to move it. She looked relaxed. Under his fingertips, which were growing white from the pressure he was applying, the indicator started to move.

  “You can’t stop it,” Elizabeth whispered. “I tried that too. I thought Sarah was moving it. But I couldn’t make it stop.”

  Jeff watched, fascinated, as the indicator moved across the board to stop at the “E.” He tried once more to hold it immobile, but it moved relentlessly onward, coming to rest at the “T.”

  “Bet,” Jeff said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It hasn’t stopped yet,” Elizabeth said. “But I know where it’s going.” The indicator swung slowly over the other way now, and stopped at “H.” A sensation came over Jeff, and he knew that the indicator wouldn’t move again.

  “Beth,” he said. “That’s your name. Short for Elizabeth.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth said. “But it isn’t me. It’s a spirit, and the spirit’s name is Beth. She must want to tell me something.”

  “Why not me?” Jeff said, grinning. “I’m here too, you know.”

  Elizabeth shook her head seriously. “No, it’s me she wants to talk to. I’ve talked to her before.”

  “Sure you have,” Jeff mocked. “I suppose she was your great-great-grandmother, or something like that?”

  Now Elizabeth looked at him nervously, and seemed to be less sure of herself. “Why did you say that?” she asked uncertainly.

  “What?” Jeff countered.

  “What do you mean, my great-great-grandmother?”

  Jeff seemed to be baffled. “I didn’t mean anything. Isn’t it always a great-great-grandmother that people talk to?”

  “Have you heard anything about my great-great-grandmother?”

  “Why should I have?” Jeff challenged.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I just thought you might have heard about the legend.”

  “What legend? Don’t tell me Beth was your great-great-grandmother. Because if you do, you’re crazier than your sister.”

  “Don’t talk that way about Sarah,” Elizabeth snapped. “It’s not nice.” She turned to Sarah. “Don’t listen to him, Sarah. He doesn’t know anything.”

  Jeff looked embarrassed and tried to mumble an apology. Then he asked Elizabeth to tell him about the legend.

  “There’s supposed to be a cave on the Point somewhere,” she began. “My great-great-grandmother, or maybe it’s three greats, had a dream about it. It was an awful dream, and the cave is supposed to be an awful place. My father told me that my great-great-grandmother said it was the gates of hell. Anyway, she had a dream about it, and then terrible things started happening.”

  “What sort of terrible things?” Jeff asked eagerly. “Did people get killed?”

  “I guess so,” Elizabeth said. “I think Beth was one of them.”

  “Who was she?”

  “I’m not certain,” Elizabeth said. Her voice had softened to a whisper, and a strange blank look had come into her eyes. “She was only a little girl when she died. A little younger than Sarah. I keep asking her what happened to her, but she won’t tell me. But it had something to do with the woods, and the cave. That’s why we’re not supposed to go there.”

  “Is that all?” Jeff seemed disappointed, as if he had been expecting much more than what Elizabeth had told him.

  “Well, there was my great-great-uncle. He killed himself.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. He came home one day, and he was carrying something. I think it was a dead cat, or something like that. Maybe it was a rabbit. Anyway, you know that study in the back of the house?”

  “The one with the picture of you in it?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “But it isn’t a picture of me. Anyway, they say my great-great-uncle took the cat or the rabbit or whatever it was into the study. Then he went out to the back of the house and jumped off the cliff.”

  Jeff’s eyes widened. “Really? Into the ocean?”

  “Of course into the ocean,” Elizabeth said. “There isn’t anything else down there, except for the rocks.”

  “Gosh,” Jeff breathed. “Did anything else happen?”

  “There was one other person, my great-grandfather. They don’t really know what happened to him, but he went to look for the cave one day, and he never came back.”

  “Did they ever find him?”

  “Yes. But he was dead. He got his foot caught in the rocks, and when the tide came in he drowned.”

  “I don’t believe any of it,” Jeff said, hoping there was more.

  “I don’t care if you believe it or not,” Elizabeth said. “It happened.”

  “Who told you?”

  “My father. And
his father told him. Or his mother. Anyway, it’s true.”

  “Have you ever seen the cave?” Jeff demanded.

  “No,” Elizabeth said uncertainly. “But nobody else has ever seen it either.”

  “Then how do you know it’s real?”

  “I just know.”

  “How?”

  “I just do.”

  “Well, if you can’t tell me how you know, then you don’t know,” Jeff said tauntingly.

  “I do know,” Elizabeth insisted. “Beth told me,” she blurted out.

  Jeff rolled his eyes. “Sure she did. Except that you don’t even know who she is.”

  “I do too,” Elizabeth said shakily. “She—she’s the girl in the picture downstairs. The one who looks like me.”

  Jeff looked at her with scorn. “Sure she is,” he sneered.

  “She is,” Elizabeth insisted. “She talks to me through the Ouija board, and she told me so.”

  Jeff lounged back, propping himself up on one elbow, and grinned at Elizabeth. Neither of them noticed that Sarah had moved out of the circle and was back at the window, staring out and shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jeff said. “If you can tell me where that cave is, then I’ll believe the rest of it.”

  Elizabeth looked at him petulantly and tried to figure out how to convince him.

  “Well, she said nervously.” There’s a place.

  Sarah turned from the window and stared vacantly across the room at Elizabeth. Neither Elizabeth nor Jeff seemed aware that she was there.

  “What kind of place?” Jeff said, disbelief filling his voice.

  “A—a secret place,” Elizabeth said.

  Sarah began screaming. The first high-pitched wail tore out of her throat as she charged across the room. Her face contorted, she grabbed the Ouija board and flung it at the window. It shattered the glass, then clattered down onto the roof of the porch.

  Jeff leaped to his feet and stared at Sarah, who was running wildly around the room, as if she was looking for something. Suddenly she bolted for the door, flung it open, and disappeared into the hall. Jeff, his face pale, looked helplessly at Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was unruffled. She went to the window, opened it, and picked the Ouija board from among the splinters of glass in which it lay, brushing her finger against one of the fragments accidentally as she did. Carefully she sucked at the wound after making sure it didn’t have any glass in it. When she was finished she turned back to Jeff and smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “It happens all the time. Don’t worry, she’ll be all right.”

  As Sarah’s first scream resounded through the house, Barbara Stevens dropped her cards, and her hands flew to her mouth.

  “My God,” she said. “Something’s happened to the children.” She was halfway out of her chair before Rose could stop her.

  “It’s Sarah,” Rose said. “It’s all right. It happens every now and then, and I know it’s awful, but please, just sit still.”

  Barbara sank uncertainly back into her chair, her face pale, and Carl Stevens sat as if rooted to his seat as the screams built in intensity. And then they heard the pounding of feet coming down the stairs.

  The door of the living room flew open, and the room was immediately vibrating with the agonized screams of the hysterical child. Sarah looked around wildly, her eyes seeming to be searching for something but seeing nothing, and then she was across the room, charging toward the French doors, her arms outstretched.

  She hit the doors full force, and her hands struck the wood frames of the panes rather than the glass itself. The doors buckled under the strain and flew open, banging back against the walls, shattering the panes. Sarah was already across the porch.

  “Jack,” Rose cried out. “Stop her! Hurry!”

  Jack was already on his feet, and as the Stevenses looked on in horror, he bolted across the room and through the doors. They heard Sarah’s screams begin to fade as she raced into the field, and watched in fascination as Jack chased her. In her hysteria Sarah moved unnaturally fast, and the three people in the living room saw that she was almost outrunning her father. She was heading toward the woods.

  In the sudden silence of the house, Rose moved to the French doors to watch the pursuit Upstairs, directly above her, Elizabeth and Jeff also watched the activity in the field, which, in the grayness of the day and the slight drizzle, seemed to be some manic form of tag. No one spoke, and time almost seemed to stop as Jack Conger tried to catch up with his fleeing daughter.

  Jack felt the rain in his face as he leaped the five steps from the porch and dashed into the field. He could see Sarah ahead of him, her small legs pumping as she charged headlong for the forest. He had thought he would have no trouble catching her, but as she maintained the distance between them Dr. Belter’s words came back to him and he realized that her body was working on adrenalin, not strength. He wondered how long she could hold her pace.

  She began slowing perceptibly when she was a little more than halfway across the field. She ran straight as an arrow, as if she had a spot picked out and was heading for it. As he chased her Jack felt his feet slip on the wet grass, and twice he stumbled. Sarah did not, and each time Jack lost his footing she widened the gap again.

  And then, finally, she began to falter, and Jack could feel that the race was almost over. He would catch up to her at the forest’s edge, or slightly inside it.

  Inside it. The thought chilled him for some reason, and then he felt an odd sensation. His system had now taken over for him, and he felt the tingling of adrenalin as it coursed suddenly through his body. He saw the woods loom up in front of him as he lunged after Sarah.

  His arms closed around her legs, and he felt her fall more than he saw it. And then she was wriggling in his arms, trying to get free of him, and her screaming mounted. The two of them struggled there in the mud, and Sarah’s thrashing became stronger, as if for some reason her fears had multiplied. He almost lost his grip on her, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

  Her screams stopped, and she lay in the mud, her small chest heaving with the exertion, her throat choking on tight little sobs. Jack picked her up gently and turned toward the house.

  He started across the field, his mind a blank. Then it began to come back to him. This was like another day, a day a year ago when he had carried Sarah across this field, and it had been raining, and she had been crying. That day her dress had been torn, and she had been bleeding. Reluctantly he looked down at the limp child in his arms.

  Her face had gotten scratched in the struggle, and there was a thin line of blood on her left cheek. Her denim overalls were muddy, and the bib had been ripped open and flapped beneath her. Jack felt panic building in him.

  He looked toward the house, and through his blurred eyes he saw them waiting for him, waiting for him to bring his child home, waiting for him to tell them what he had done. What had he done? He didn’t know what he’d done. He was bringing his child home. But they were waiting for him. Why were they waiting for him?

  He no longer felt the rain on his face, or the spongy softness of the wet field under his feet It was as if he was walking through a tunnel, and he didn’t know what lay at the other end, nor did he know what lay at the end he was coming from. He felt himself getting dizzy, and he forced his eyes from the group that waited for him at the French doors. He forced himself to look up.

  He saw Elizabeth. She stood at a window on the second floor, and she was watching him. She was smiling at him. It was a gentle smile, and it comforted him.

  Jack felt the panic begin to recede, and he concentrated on watching Elizabeth—on watching Elizabeth as she watched him, beckoned him onward, somehow comforting him as he carried Sarah through the rain.

  Elizabeth disappeared from his view as he stepped onto the porch. The panic came upon him once more.

  He carried Sarah into the living room and laid her gently on the sofa. Then he gave in to the panic and t
he hysteria and began to sob. He backed away from Sarah, as if he never should have carried her into the house at all, and watched, strangely detached, as Rose and the Stevenses gathered around her, clucking over her and fussing. No one saw him leave the room. They were busy with Sarah. He found his way up the stairs and into the bedroom he shared with Rose. He lay down on the bed and began to cry. He was remembering. He hated it.

  * * *

  Downstairs, the three adults in the living room stared helplessly at the sobbing child on the sofa. All they could do, they knew, was wait till it passed. But the sobs were heart-rending, and it almost sounded as though Sarah was trying to say something.

  They strained their ears and tried to make words out of the strange sounds that were being wrenched out of Sarah, as if by some unseen force.

  “Secret,” she seemed to be saying. “Secret … secret.”

  But they couldn’t be sure.

  21

  Barbara Stevens felt totally helpless as she watched Rose try to comfort Sarah. The child lay trembling on the couch, and her vacant eyes darted wildly around the room, as if searching for a way out If there were any coherent thoughts going through her mind, it was impossible to interpret what they might be.

  “It’s all right, baby,” Rose crooned over and over. “It’s all going to be all right now. It’s over, and Mother’s here.” She was trying to cradle the child’s head in her arms, but Sarah kept jerking spasmodically. It was all Rose could do to keep her on the sofa.

  The Stevenses’ eyes met over the crouching Rose, and a look of pity passed between them. Then they heard a noise at the living-room door and saw Elizabeth and Jeff standing there. Carl started to wave them back upstairs, but Rose had seen them too.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “She’s quieting.” She turned her attention to the two children, who were now inside the living room, standing quietly, though Jeff was fidgeting.

  “What happened up there?” Rose said quietly. She glanced at both children, but her gaze settled on Elizabeth. “What set her off?”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “We were playing with the Ouija board, and then I started telling Jeff about the old family legend.”