Molly’s body grew cold as she listened to this prayer. Go through babyhood again? What did she mean by that? She thought back to her dream in the cabin, but what if it hadn’t been a dream? What if it had really happened?
She needed only to think of little Veronica lying next to her to see how such a thing could happen. She must have fallen into the fountain, unless someone pushed her. Of course! Becky wanted a baby of her own, a real-life doll to play with, so she lured Molly into the cave and dunked her in the Fountain of Youth, pulling out a tiny baby.
Everyone must have known about this: Samantha, Prudence, Wendell, and David. Why hadn’t any of them ever told her? Why did they let Becky do this to her? Maybe it was a punishment for being bad. Instead of spanking her or sending her to bed without dinner, they turned her into a baby and gave her to Becky to raise. Either Molly had done something terrible or the people she loved were monsters.
Even as Molly considered all this, Becky threw off Veronica’s sweater. “Molly? What are you doing here? How did you get inside?” she said.
Molly stood up, unable to keep the tears from her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me I was a big girl once? You liar!” Molly shouted.
“You heard that? Oh, Molly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way. Let’s go home and we’ll talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”
“I don’t want to go home with you. You’re mean and a liar and I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“Molly, that’s enough. You’re coming back with me this instant.” For the first time Becky noticed Veronica lying on the ground, clad only in a shirt that drooped to her ankles. “Who’s this?”
“This is Veronica. She’s my friend.”
Becky held up the oversized sweater and pants. “You two have been playing with the fountain, haven’t you? Molly, how did you get in here? Did someone leave the door open?”
“Veronica and I got in here all by ourselves,” Molly said, puffing out her chest with pride.
Becky knelt down beside Veronica, who hadn’t moved at all since Becky found them. “Veronica, can you hear me? Can you talk? Are you all right? Nod for me if you’re all right, sweetie.” Veronica nodded her head slightly. “Good girl. Molly, where did she come from?”
“Across the sea,” Molly said. “Her grandfather had a map leading here with all sorts of riddles for her grandmother to solve. She never solved them, but Veronica did.”
Becky examined the clothes in her hands again. “How old was Veronica when she came here? How long has she been here?” Molly said nothing. Becky took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Molly, answer me! This is important. We could all be in terrible danger. If anyone else finds this place—”
“Veronica isn’t going to hurt anyone. She took care of me when I got sick, before you found me.”
“We’ll talk about this more later. For now I better get you girls out of here. Veronica, can you walk? Do you need me to carry you, sweetie?”
Veronica got to her feet, a curtain of dark hair obscuring her face. Becky took her hand and then led her towards the opening with Molly following behind. Veronica stopped at the fountain to stare into the water. Molly didn’t know what she saw, but it made Veronica cry.
“You can’t change me back, can you?” Veronica asked.
Becky knelt down beside her, parting Veronica’s hair to look into her eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wish there was a way, but there isn’t. It’s not so bad, though to grow up again. In time you’ll get used to it. You can live with Molly and I in our house. You and Molly can share a room. I’ll have Wendell make you a bed all your own. And you two can work with me in the bakery. We’ll be one big family. You’ll see.”
“No,” Veronica said.
“No? I know it’s difficult now, sweetheart, but in time—”
“In time? I’m three years old! I’m a baby!” Veronica’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “If you think it’s so easy, let’s see you do it.”
She shoved Becky with more strength than Molly thought possible for a toddler to possess. Becky stumbled back, teetering on the edge of the fountain. She reached out to grab Molly’s hand, her fingers grazing the edge of Molly’s jacket. Molly stood there frozen, unable to take Becky’s arm.
Becky tumbled backwards, her last desperate grab for purchase snatching Veronica’s shirt. They plunged into the fountain together, disappearing in a flash of light. “No!” Molly shouted. She tried to reach into the fountain to pull them out, but her arms wouldn’t reach.
Then she saw the sweater lying nearby and dangled it over the water. “Grab it and I’ll pull you up,” she shouted. For a moment nothing happened, but then a hand emerged from the water to seize the sweater. Molly pulled with all her might, praying the sweater didn’t fall apart.
A chubby shape plopped out of the water, gasping for air. The light around the shape evaporated to reveal neither Becky nor Veronica, but some hybrid of the two. The girl, about the same age as Molly, was fat like Becky, but with skin a light shade of tan and hair a brown so dark it bordered on black. The girl finished spitting out water and then held up a hand. “I’m fat! And white,” she shouted.
“Veronica? Is it you?” Molly asked.
The girl got to her feet, patting her bulging stomach. “I guess. I’m not really sure,” she said.
“What happened?”
“We fell in and I felt myself growing smaller and smaller until I must have been an embryo or something. Then I saw this flash of light and you were pulling me up,” she said.
“It’s a miracle,” Molly said. “But what about Becky?”
Veronica looked down into the fountain. “She’s gone. I’m sorry, Molly. I know how much she meant to you.”
“She lied to me,” Molly said. “I’m glad she’s gone.” Nevertheless, Molly’s eyes filled with tears. Veronica donned her old pants and sweater and then put an arm around Molly.
“Come on, we have to get out of here.”
“Where are we going to go? Across the sea?”
“Like this? We’re kids. There’s no way we can make it over there and even if we did it would be worse than staying here. We’ll go back to your house.”
“For how long?”
“Until we’re ready,” Veronica said. Molly took a look back at the Fountain of Youth before she left for any sign of Becky, but Veronica was right: Becky was gone.
Chapter 36: Fat Woman and Little Girl
Lizzie didn’t run down the hill so much as she rolled down, landing on the curb next to Main Street. She tried to push herself into a standing position, but couldn’t get any traction with her feet. She couldn’t lean forward enough to reach her shoes and so had to shake her feet around until the sneakers came loose. She clapped a hand over her mouth in time to prevent a scream. “No,” she wailed.
Instead of feet she now had hooves. Pig legs to go with her pig snout. Before much longer she imagined herself scurrying around on all fours, able only to oink and wheeze like an animal. This isn’t real, she told herself for the hundredth time since falling off the pyramid. It’s a nightmare. She must have hit her head on the gym floor and right now she was lying in a hospital bed with Mom, the other cheerleaders, and even bratty Wendell sitting at her side, waiting for her to wake up. She tried to imagine herself emerging from a long tunnel of darkness, into the light of the hospital room.
Nothing happened. “Have you given up already, little piggy,” Samantha said. She descended the hill slowly, as though floating along the surface of the street. The cleaver gleamed in her hand, the blade poised to strike. “I think I’ll start with some bacon, then a nice ham steak, and finally sausage.”
“I’m not a—” An oink escaped her lips. “Pig.”
“Not yet, but soon.” With this, a hole tore open in Lizzie’s pants. A curly tail corkscrewed out from the opening.
“Stop this! I’ll give you anything. Change me back.”
“I want you
to suffer. I want you to die,” Samantha hissed. Lizzie tried again to get up, this time her hooves biting into the ground so she managed to push herself upright. She waddled along Main Street, shouting for help, but no one answered. She didn’t see a single person on Main Street or in the store windows. Where is everyone?
She pounded one door after another, hoping someone would emerge to help, but no one did. “Help—” Another oink interrupted her. “Help me!”
In the reflection of the display window for Designs By Suzie, she gasped. She reached up to finger the floppy ears on the top of her head—a pig’s ears. She didn’t have much time to find help before the transformation was complete. Her stomach pushed outward another inch, the remains of her T-shirt and jeans replaced by a turquoise maternity dress.
There has to be someone who can help me, she thought. But how could anyone undo this and make her human again? She needed a miracle. She looked down Main Street to the white steeple of the church rising over everything else. The church seemed like a long shot, but at this point she didn’t see any better alternatives. She couldn’t stand here and wait to turn into a sow and then have Samantha kill her. She started down the road, hoping she made it in time.
***
Wendell stopped at the window for Designs by Suzie. As he watched the girl’s reflection in the glass, her wavy hair reformed into bouncy curls. A sailor suit—complete with white hat—replaced Samantha’s pink dress.
He reached up to touch his head and grimaced as the girl performed the exact same movement. I’m not a girl, he thought. This is all a horrible nightmare. I fainted in the auditorium before I went on. Too much stress and too little sleep knocked me out. Any moment he would wake up in a hospital room with Mom, Samantha, and even Prudence by his bedside. He would tell them about this terrible dream and everyone would laugh.
He closed his eyes and willed himself to wake up. Now, he thought. Wake up, now. He opened his eyes and saw the adorable little girl still looking back at him. She started to cry at the precise moment he did, her freckled cheeks turning red and her dimples fading.
“What’s wrong, Wendy?” Samantha asked. She coasted down the road towards him, the vial of poison still in her hand. “Don’t you like it? You look like Shirley Temple, ready to dance and sing. Makes me want to grab one of those sweet little cheeks and pinch it.”
“Leave me alone! I’m not a girl. This is a trick.”
“Why don’t you come with me? We’ll go home and play dress-up. I’ll let you use my makeup.”
“Stop this! Change me back right now.”
“I like you better this way. You’re so much cuter. In time you’ll come to like being a girl.”
“No. I’ll never be a girl. Never!” In the display window, the girl’s reflection shrank another inch. Wendell turned away from the window. He shouted for help, but no one responded. He didn’t see anyone except for Samantha, as though the entire town had suddenly vanished. No one can help me anyway, he thought. No one can change me back. I need a miracle. He spotted the church steeple rising over the trees. It was his only hope. He scampered down the road as fast as he could, the tap shoes on his feet clicking against the pavement with every step.
Then, as he neared the pet shop, he heard a second set of tap shoes on the street. At first he thought it was Samantha mocking him, but then he saw a figure up ahead. There was someone else still here. He raced towards the figure, calling for it to stop. It turned around and a very girlish scream came from his lips.
What turned to face him was not human, but some kind of half-woman, half-pig creature. The pig girl snorted in surprise, her beady eyes narrowing to the point where they disappeared behind her chubby cheeks. “Wendell?” she asked, punctuating the question with an oink.
“Prudence? My God, what’s happened to you?”
“Samantha did this to me. I had just landed on the top of the pyramid and then all the sudden I started getting fat and I ran to the bathroom—” Another oink followed by a period of wheezing interrupted her. Wendell saw her entire body grow fatter, pushing the maternity dress to the breaking point. “And then I started turning into a pig. She’s trying to kill me. She wants to cut me up into bacon and ham and sausage.”
“Samantha? She’s after me too. I was just starting to give my lecture when my voice changed and I started getting breasts and then I was in this all girls school and Samantha tried to kill me and now I keep getting littler. I was on my way to the church to pray for a miracle when I ran into you.”
“I was going to the church too. We can go together.”
They heard footsteps behind them that could only belong to Samantha. Lizzie took Wendell’s hand and then slung him onto her back. She galloped off on her hooves towards the church.
By the time they reached the Seabrooke Episcopalian Church, Lizzie barely had the strength to stand. A toddler in a white straw hat and powder blue dress slipped off her shoulders to land on the church steps. “Come on,” Wendell said. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the door handles and even then couldn’t open the doors until Lizzie knocked them open with her stomach. “What do we do now?” Wendell asked.
“I don’t know. Pray, I guess.”
Wendell skipped down the row of pews to the altar and knelt down. Prudence collapsed next to him, wheezing so hard he thought she might die on the spot. “God, please help us,” Wendell said. “Please remove this curse from us and we’ll do whatever you ask of us. You’re our only hope.”
“My children, I have been waiting for you,” a man said. Wendell opened his eyes to find a sandy-haired reverend standing behind the pulpit. “You have both strayed from The Way and this is the result of your sins.”
The reverend stepped out from behind the pulpit carrying a silver cup in his hand. “Drink from this my children and your sins will be washed away. You will be born anew.”
Lizzie accepted the cup in her chubby hands. As she raised the cup to her lips, she saw a reflection in the water. Not herself as a cheerleader or the piggish thing she’d become, but a baby like Wendell. She looked up at the reverend, recognizing the cruel anticipation in his eyes. She poured the contents of the cup onto the floor.
“You fools!” the reverend shouted. “Now your souls will never know salvation. You will be consumed by the fires of Hell! Begone foul, cursed beasts!”
Prudence scrambled up onto her hooves and snatched little Wendell in her arms. “What did you do that for?” Wendell asked.
“I know where we have to go,” she said. She galloped through the church doors and the turned back towards town. She only hoped they could make it in time.
Chapter 37: Explosions
Moonlight shone down into the largest hole Samantha had ever seen. Joseph parked the car beside a rusty metal fence, beneath a sign warning against trespassing. “What are we doing here?” Samantha asked.
“We have to do some shopping,” Joseph said. “We can’t get everything we need from the shopping mall.”
Samantha got out of the car and stood with Joseph by the fence. All she saw was a giant hole in the ground with a few pieces of yellow machinery scattered about. What could they possibly need from this dump? “I don’t know about this,” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Don’t worry. There’s only one security guard. We’ll be in and out long before he wakes up from his nap.”
Samantha thought of Joseph’s father lying in a coma, poor Mrs. Schulman spread out on the floor like a rug, and the two children thrashing around on the brass bed. “You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”
“Not yet,” Joseph said. Samantha shivered at the menace in his voice. By the time they robbed this bank, she imagined a trail of bodies stretching from Seabrooke to Bangor. “He shouldn’t give us any problems. Here, hold this.”
He handed a knapsack to her, in which she found bolt cutters, gloves, and a cutting torch. “What is all this?”
“Tools. They aren’t going to sell us what we need, so we’ll have
to take the stuff.” Joseph climbed up the fence and then dropped to the other side. He called for Samantha to toss the knapsack over. She followed him over the fence then, checking with each rung to make sure no police jumped out of the trees to arrest her.
She landed next to Joseph and said, “This place gives me the creeps. Can’t we find what we need somewhere else? Somewhere indoors maybe?”
“Come on, don’t be a baby. Nothing bad is going to happen. There aren’t any monsters out here to get us.”
“I know,” Samantha said without conviction. “It’s so quiet out here. I don’t like it.”
Joseph kissed her on the lips, filling her with new courage. “I thought you were raised out in the woods by wolves,” he said with a smile.
“So maybe I’m homesick,” she said with a matching smile.
“Let’s go.” He slung the knapsack over his shoulder and then turned on a flashlight. She took his hand to follow him through the dark along the edge of the hole. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but she hoped he would find it soon. No matter how she tried to tell herself nothing would happen, she couldn’t shake the feeling someone was about to jump out at them to bust them.
He stopped at a metal shed with a red skull-and-bones sign over the door warning them about explosives inside. “Explosives? Aren’t those dangerous?” she said.
“In the wrong hands, yes. I know what I’m doing.”
“Have you ever used any before?”
“No, but I did some reading on the Internet before we left. It’s not very difficult.” He reached into the knapsack for the bolt cutters. “Do you see any wires? There shouldn’t be an alarm, but you never know.”
She felt around the sides of the shed for any wires, but couldn’t find any. Something small and furry darted over her foot and into the bushes nearby. She stifled a scream with her hand, putting the other on her rapidly beating heart. It’s probably a squirrel, she told herself. Nothing dangerous.
“What’s wrong?” Joseph asked when she returned to the front of the shed. He squeezed her arm hard enough to make her wince. “Did you see anything?”
Children of Eternity Omnibus Page 51
