Suffer the Children - By John Saul Page 0,98

didn’t feel it. She moved slowly but deliberately through the storm.

She reached the edge of the woods, and didn’t pause to enjoy the protection the trees gave her from the downpour. Her hair was plastered shroudlike over her shoulders now, its wet sleekness accenting the features of her face. Her pace quickened, and she moved through the woods with a sure-footedness that would have seemed impossible to an observer, had there been one.

Lightning was beginning to play across the horizon when she emerged from the woods, and a roll of thunder greeted her as she stepped out onto the crest of the embankment. It was dark, very dark, though the sun had not yet set. The storm seemed to blot it out almost completely, and the sea, barely visible through the rain, had the menacing look of an animal in the night. Elizabeth, slowed by neither the rain nor the darkness, began gliding down the face of the embankment. As the storm intensified she disappeared behind the boulder that guarded the entrance to the tunnel.

She found the flashlight in its niche next to the tunnel entrance, but didn’t turn it on until she had reached the upper chamber. By now the stench from the dead cat, mixed with the sour smells from the children’s vomiting, had fouled the air throughout the cavern, but Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice it.

She crept to the top of the shaft, clicked the light on, and peered down. She could see nothing except the large fiat table-rock, but she could hear soft moaning drifting upward. She knew Kathy and Jimmy were still down there, cowering somewhere in the darkness. She smiled to herself and began to lower the rope ladder into the pit.

She tested it briefly, then began to climb down, the still-lit flashlight casting eerie shadows as it glowed in the pocket of her peculiar, old-fashioned dress. She felt her foot hit the floor of the cave and stepped away from the ladder. She drew the flashlight from her pocket and shined it around the cavern.

Kathy Burton and Jimmy Tyler sat huddled together against the wall of the cavern opposite the place where the skeleton lay. Kathy’s eyes were tightly shut against the sudden brightness of the light, but Jimmy Tyler held one hand out, shielding himself from the worst of the glare. He was squinting, trying to see past the source of the light. Kathy was whimpering softly to herself, and except for the hand clasped over her face was apparently unaware of what was going on. Jimmy didn’t try to get up, but his eyes moved alertly in the light. Elizabeth shifted the beam to the old skeleton, and a sound crept from her lips as she saw that it was in disarray, the bones scattered a couple of feet in every direction.

Elizabeth reached into her pocket and brought out some candles she had found in the tack room and a small cigarette lighter she had taken from the house. She wedged the candles into cracks in the walls and lit them, placing the lighter carefully into a crevice just below the candles. Then she snapped the flashlight off, and it disappeared back into the large pocket of her dress. The flames of the candles flickered, then grew steady, and a warm light suddenly bathed the interior of the cavern.

Ignoring the two children huddled together, Elizabeth began tending to the old bones opposite them. Tenderly she moved each bone back into its proper position, and in a few minutes the skeleton was complete again, its arms folded once more over its empty rib cage. Only then did Elizabeth turn her attention back to Kathy Burton and Jimmy Tyler.

“It’s time to have another party,” she whispered. Kathy didn’t seem to hear her, but Jimmy shrank closer to the girl next to him, his mind filling with fear. He knew this was Elizabeth, but she was not the Elizabeth he had known all his life. It was another Elizabeth, a terrifying Elizabeth.

She was covered with mud, and her hair, muddy now, as well as wet, clung to her face and shoulders. The torn dress, soaking wet and slimy with the muck of the cavern, clung to her body in lumpy folds, and there was an emptiness in her face that reminded Jimmy of his grandmother, when he had seen her at her funeral two months ago. She looks dead, Jimmy thought. Elizabeth looks dead. He tried to burrow in closer to Kathy Burton.

As he

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