Children of Eternity Omnibus

by P. T. Dilloway

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said and what you read to me. And, while I’m not saying you’re right, there’s a chance you might be. Maybe if I heard more I could make up my mind.”

  “Now? You want to read to you now?”

  “If you don’t mind.” Prudence looked down at the floor with embarrassment. “I know it’s late, but I can’t get these visions out of my head.”

  “All right. Let me get—” Prudence held up Samantha’s apron containing Rebel of Love. Samantha opened it to where she’d left off at Prudence’s cottage. After arriving in New York City, Remy LeBeau meets with an evil crime boss named Vinny Torelli, who threatens to kill him unless he pays back a large sum of money in three days. Remy goes to the nearest bar to plot his strategy when he sees a newspaper article on the wealthy heiress Vienna Hampton, who has just divorced her husband. Here, Prudence stopped Samantha’s reading.

  “What’s a divorce?”

  “When two people who got married don’t want to be together anymore they get a divorce so they aren’t married anymore.” Prudence nodded her understanding and Samantha continued. Remy figures if he can make Vienna fall in love with him, he can get the money he needs. He meets with an old army buddy to create a foolproof scheme to make Vienna love him.

  “So Remy is going to lie to her?” Prudence asked. “That’s wicked of him. He’s going to go to Hell for certain.”

  Samantha was about to respond, but then she noticed the door open a crack and a pale face peeking into the room. “Who’s there?” she said. The face disappeared from the door. Samantha leapt off the bed and threw open the door to see a little girl running down the aisle. The girl disappeared between two beds. When Samantha caught up, she saw little Rebecca curled into a ball between her bed and Samantha’s. “Rebecca, how long were you listening at the door?”

  “Not long,” she said. “Are you going to hurt me?”

  Samantha knelt down to push Rebecca’s hands away from her face. “Of course I’m not. You shouldn’t be up so late.”

  “Neither should you.”

  “Prudence and I were talking.” She helped Rebecca up and then tucked the girl into bed. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Can I hear more about Remy and Vienna tomorrow? I promise I won’t say anything.”

  Samantha considered this. She looked over to Prudence, who had turned the same color as her nightgown. “I’m sorry,” Samantha said. “It’s a grownup story.” At this, Rebecca began to cry. The girls around her stirred and any moment Samantha knew the entire dormitory would be alerted.

  “All right, all right. You can listen tomorrow night, but don’t tell anyone else. It’s a secret.”

  “I want to hear it too.” The other toddlers were now all awake and staring at Samantha expectantly.

  She threw up her hands and said, “Fine, but maybe I should start at the beginning.” She took the book from Prudence’s trembling hand and started over again with Remy flying into New York City. By the time she finished, she noticed everyone—even Helena—listening with rapt attention. “Just don’t tell anyone else,” she said to them all and sighed.

  Chapter 17: Acceptance

  “Today we’re going to start on the Psalms,” Miss Brigham said the next morning. “There are quite a few. Get as far as you can before lunch.”

  “All right, Miss Brigham.” Samantha waited for her teacher to get down the pathway towards the meadow before she pulled aside the rug and opened the trap door.

  In the two weeks since her first visit, Samantha had improved the cellar. She had smuggled in a dozen candles, which she placed at intervals along the walls. As she crept through the cellar, she lit each candle to banish the darkness. Rebecca had given her a bouquet of wildflowers that Samantha scattered around the cellar to improve the smell.

  Her explorations had yet to uncover anything about what had happened to her or the other children’s parents. And while she could now remember highways, computers, and moving pictures, she still could not remember anything about herself.

  As she had done over the last two weeks, Samantha removed the bassinette from the lid of the trunk to reveal the treasure trove of books. She had finished Rebel of Love in three days and since then read through Rebel Heart, Rebel Dream, and Rebel Yell. She picked up the next book on the stack, Rebel Paradise, in which Remy and Vienna flee to a tropical island to escape Vinny Torelli’s evil minions. From looking through the trunk, Samantha knew there were ten more books in the series. In all, she counted sixty-nine of the slim paperbacks and thirty-two magazines with titles like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair.

  On their covers, the magazines promised how to get boys to like you, a subject Samantha had little interest in. She liked the magazines for their pictures of beautiful women. Whenever she saw one with her same hair, eye, or skin color she imagined that woman as her mother kissing her goodnight or asking about her day. Because of this, she never showed the magazines to any of the other girls.

  That night, the girls all pretended to sleep on their pallets until they were positive Miss Brigham had gone back to her cottage. As one, they threw the covers off and filed into the other room, where they sat in a semi-circle three-deep around the bed. Samantha sat on the bed and opened the book to begin the nightly reading.

  The story began with Remy and Vienna landing on the island of Jamaica. “Where’s that?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it’s far away,” Samantha said. She described Vienna walking along the beach in a bikini. Helena stopped her to ask about bikinis. “They’re for swimming. One part is like a very small pair of underwear and the other part goes over your chest.”

  “So you’re almost naked?” Prudence asked, her face wrinkling with disgust.

  “Yes. That’s the point.” The younger girls all shuddered at this while the older ones—except Prudence—adopted a dreamy look. Samantha continued the story with Remy kissing Vienna and pushing her down into the sand. She skipped over the rest of the scene, picking it back up in the hotel, where an assassin leaps out of the closet to attack Remy. The toddlers gasped at this, some pulling their nightgowns over their heads. Remy and the assassin roll across the floor, the assassin trying to stab Remy until Vienna breaks a wine bottle over the assassin’s head. “That’s all for tonight,” Samantha announced to a chorus of groans.

  “Oh, come on, read another chapter. Please?” Helena begged. The other girls pleaded with Samantha to read a little more, as they did every night.

  “I can’t keep you up all night and have you falling asleep during class tomorrow. Miss Brigham will get suspicious.” Samantha put the book into her apron and then climbed off the bed. She scooped up Rebecca, who fell asleep on Samantha’s shoulder. She tucked the little girl into bed, kissing her on the cheek before saying goodnight the way she wished she could remember her own mother doing. Then she lay down to get what sleep she could.

  When she drifted off to sleep, she found herself standing in a hotel room similar to the one in the book, only blown up to giant proportions. When she saw herself in a mirror, she realized the room looked enormous because she was a toddler like Rebecca.

  She heard footsteps in the hall outside her door. “Mama?” she called out in a tiny voice. “Mama, you there?”

  The footsteps began to fade away from the door. “Mama!” Samantha screamed. She tried to open the door, but it was too high up for her to reach. “Mama, come back!” she wailed.

  The door opened and Samantha dashed into the hallway in time to see a woman with black hair to her waist disappearing down the hall. Samantha ran after her as fast she could, but her chubby little legs couldn’t move fast enough. “Mama, come back!” she howled again. She collapsed to the floor as the woman vanished without looking back.

  Samantha woke up and heard the door to the dining room close. A shape tiptoed along the beds, stopping in the middle of the row. In the dim light she made out Helena crawling back into bed. After a moment Samantha fell asleep again and by t
he morning it seemed as fuzzy as the dream.

  Chapter 18: Romantic Entanglement

  Miss Brigham cleared her throat for the fourth time that afternoon. “Samantha, dear, pay attention. As I was saying—”

  Samantha watched Miss Brigham’s lips move, but she didn’t hear the words coming out. She nodded when it seemed appropriate and stared at the pages of the Bible. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t concentrate this afternoon. In the cellar this morning she had found something too disturbing to focus on her studies.

  She had opened the trunk and begun looking at the novels. She finished Rebel Paradise the night before and wanted to try something different. Several of the slim novels piqued her interest until she held up one called Forever Young. On the cover, a raven-haired woman stood defiantly in a field, her eyes looking skyward. This didn’t look much different from the sixty-eight other covers, but when she read the description on the back, the book fell from her numb fingers.

  In Forever Young, a widowed woman named Samantha Young arrives in the town of Amaranthine, Kansas to start a new life on her own. Almost immediately, Samantha comes into conflict with Frederick Casey, a railroad baron who owns almost everything in town. When Samantha refuses to sell her farm or open her heart to Casey, it leads to a dramatic showdown.

  Samantha had thought Miss Brigham came up with the name Samantha Young randomly, but had she intended it as something more? The parallels between the book and her real-life situation seemed too many to be coincidence. Samantha in the book came to a small town with no family, just like her. Then there was Frederick Casey, who ran the town and had the same initials as Reverend Francis Crane. Was Samantha’s name supposed to be a hidden message?

  Instead of reading Jeremiah this morning as she had been assigned, she read Forever Young. The more she read, the more she saw herself as the novel’s heroine. In the book, Samantha Young never knew her parents, who had died in an Indian raid when she was three years old. The other women in town all made fun of Samantha behind her back because she was foolish enough to think she could manage the old Conner farm on her own. That is except for her chubby neighbor Gertrude, who helped Samantha through the rough first days. This is me! Samantha thought.

  Now she heard Miss Brigham snapping her fingers and realized she’d lost focus once again. “I’m sorry, Miss Brigham, I’m not feeling well today,” Samantha said.

  Miss Brigham put a hand to her forehead, pulling it away a minute later. “You don’t feel warm. Is there something else bothering you? Are the other girls giving you a hard time?”

  “No, everyone’s been wonderful. But I’ve been here two weeks and I still don’t know who I am.”

  “I know, dear, but it will come back to you. You have to give it time.”

  “I guess so.” Samantha looked down at her lap, where the book rested in her apron. “How did you come up with my name? I mean, how did you know I was a Samantha and not a Gertrude?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, dear. You looked like a Samantha to me. I can call you Gertrude if you want, although I think Samantha is a far prettier name.”

  “I do too. I thought maybe you had a reason for my name.”

  Someone knocked timidly on the door. Miss Brigham got up to answer it. “Annie, aren’t you supposed to be helping Phyllis?” Miss Brigham asked a sandy-haired toddler.

  “She says we’re almost out of towels and Helena hasn’t brought over the laundry yet. She’s not in her cottage either.”

  “Did you check by the stream, dear? She may still be washing the laundry.” Annie shook her head. “Very well, Samantha and I will find her. I will check by the stream. Samantha, go out to the meadow and see if perhaps she is drying the laundry out there. Annie, tell Phyllis to use spare aprons or bedding if she must. On you go, dear.”

  Annie scampered away to relay the message while Miss Brigham and Samantha hurried out of town. “That girl is becoming most unreliable,” Miss Brigham said. “Why just the other day I had to send Prudence to assist her with the laundry or we would have gone naked the next day.”

  “Maybe she’s ill.”

  “Perhaps. I fear I will have to speak to the reverend about her. We cannot allow this to go on.” They split up at the fork in the road, Samantha hurrying towards the meadow. As she did, she remembered the night she woke up from her dream and saw Helena sneaking back into bed from the dining room. What has she been up to? Samantha wondered.

  A bush rattled nearby and Samantha froze, preparing for one of Pryde’s dogs to lunge at her. Instead, she heard Helena’s voice say, “I should get back to the stream before Miss Brigham finds out I’m gone.”

  “Just a couple more minutes,” said a voice Samantha recognized as John’s.

  “I can’t. I have to go. I mean it.”

  “Come on, one more time. Please.”

  Helena laughed and said, “You can’t get enough, can you?”

  “You’re addictive,” John said.

  Throughout the exchange, Samantha crept nearer to the bushes. When she got close enough to peer through the leaves, she had to put a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. Lying on a rock were Helena and John’s clothes.

  The two children lay in the grass. As Samantha watched in shock, John kissed Helena on the lips like Remy and Vienna in the books. After the kiss, they lay in the sun, holding hands and looking up at the sky. “I love you,” Helena said. “But what if someone finds out?”

  “No one’s going to find out. We’ve been careful.” As if in response, the bushes to their left rustled. Helena and John sat up at the same time a hand clamped over Samantha’s face. She tried to elbow the attacker, but he yanked her down to the ground and stuffed a rag into her mouth. Like in her nightmares, she found her arms and legs bound.

  “I warned you,” Pryde growled into her ear.

  The bushes all around the lovers came to life. Pryde’s dogs appeared from every direction, snarling and advancing slowly on the couple. They closed within six inches of Helena and John, cutting off any hope of escape. With nowhere else to go, Helena fell sobbing into John’s arms.

  Pryde shoved the underbrush aside and snapped his fingers. At his signal, the dogs backed away, only their snouts visible in the bushes. Pryde grabbed the clothes off the rock and tossed them to Helena and John. “Get dressed. You’re going to see the reverend.”

  “No, please, we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Please, let us go. We won’t do it again!” Helena pleaded. Pryde said nothing. He waited for them to dress and then bound their hands and jammed gags into their mouths as he’d done to Samantha. He pushed them forward through the bushes and onto the path, where Helena’s eyes met Samantha’s.

  “You’re coming with me too,” Pryde said. He untied the bonds on her legs, but kept her hands tied. He jerked Samantha to her feet by one of her braids, the rag muffling her scream. With the dogs forming a circle around them, they started towards Eternity.

  Miss Brigham met them at the fork in the road and flew to Samantha’s side. “What is the meaning of this? Unhand her, you brute!” Miss Brigham said. She started to untie Samantha’s hands until one of the dogs snapped at her. Pryde threw Miss Brigham to the ground as though she weighed nothing.

  “Don’t interfere. They’re mine now.”

  “Reverend Crane will hear about this, you can be sure of that,” Miss Brigham said, but her voice sounded shaken and weak. She followed them silently into town, at one point risking a reassuring pat on Samantha’s shoulder. “It will be all right.”

  Samantha glanced at the dogs surrounding them and then at Pryde before looking down at the ground. She couldn’t believe Miss Brigham’s kind words. They were doomed.

  Chapter 19: Prudence Iscariot

  Pryde left Miss Brigham and the children at the church door, shoving the children inside. Pryde left for the reverend’s house, leaving one dog to stand guard. The remaining dog sat on the steps, its muscular black frame poised to strike down anyone foolish enough to
open the door.

  Her hands still bound and her mouth gagged, Samantha could do nothing but collapse in the front row to await her punishment. She didn’t think she did anything wrong this time, but she supposed watching two naked people kiss was against The Way. Helena would certainly tattle on her about the books from Miss Brigham’s cellar to save her own skin. She imagined the reverend’s outrage when he found out about that. Pryde would feed her to the dog outside.

  The door opened and Samantha jumped, but it was not Reverend Crane. Miss Brigham untied Samantha’s hands and took the gag from her mouth. “Samantha, what happened? Did that monster hurt you?”

  Samantha worked saliva back into her mouth and then spat out the awful taste of the rag before she said, “I was on my way to the meadow like you said. I heard a noise and then I saw them kissing.” She pointed to Helena and John lying by the altar, close enough together to kiss again.

  “Kissing? This is most serious indeed. You didn’t kiss anyone did you, dear?” Miss Brigham asked her.

  “No, I saw them and then he grabbed me.”

  Miss Brigham took the gag from Helena and John’s mouths. “Is this true?” she asked.

  “Yes, Miss Brigham,” Helena said. “We wanted to know what it was like. That’s all.”

  “You children know better. I’m very disappointed in both of you. This will not do at all. The three of you stay here while I talk to the reverend. Perhaps I can persuade him to be lenient. Then we will have a long discussion about this.” Miss Brigham gave them a hard look before she hurried out the door.

  “What do we do?” Helena said. “He’s not going to be lenient no matter what Miss Brigham says. We’re doomed.”

  Samantha couldn’t disagree with Helena’s assessment. “Maybe she’ll get him to exile us instead of executing us,” Samantha said.

  “This is your fault,” Helena said. “You and those books of yours. If you hadn’t started reading them to us none of this would have happened.”