Bloodline(79)

Whatever you do, don’t wander into the basement.

We step down the stairs.

The smell reaches me first. I think it’s the stench of an animal farm—close bodies, waste—but realize there’s something human about it, the smell of meat eaters, of bipeds, of creatures whose clothes are washed sometimes but not often enough.

Then Catherine opens the basement door, her eyes cutting into me, lips pulled back from sharp, strong teeth in an approximation of a smile.

She steps back.

A scream freezes in my mouth.

A dozen people, maybe more, stand inside, each of them terribly deformed, all with the same pin heads and jutting jaws. Some have stumps for arms, nubs of flesh where ears should be, appendages where there should be none.

I recognize the woman from the furniture store, the feral thing with the melting eyes. Mildred walks over to her, tentatively. When she stands behind her, the woman snarls, the sound matched by the two women next to her. They all have the eyes sliding down their faces.

Mildred’s three daughters.

The scream breaks free, but it’s a sob.

I know what I’m looking at. The cursed full-blood children of Lilydale, doomed to live these half lives because of their parents’ commitment to a pure bloodline.

My half siblings.

Dorothy hovers near the door, her hands clasped in front of her. Does she not have children in this basement? Can she not produce even this?

I notice the cots rimming the edges and realize Lilydale’s children must live and die in this facility, away from the questioning eyes of the world. Catherine is walking toward the shadowed edge of the cafeteria-size room, her steps mincing, as if she’s approaching a caged lion.

That’s when I spot him.

A hulking, shirtless man. He’s staring at me. His lips are belligerent, but his face disappears just beneath them, perched on a neck that’s impossibly wider than his head. What he’s missing in chin he makes up for in a slender, towering cranium speckled with bristly hair more animal than human. His ears stick out nearly as far as his sloping shoulders.

“Joan,” Catherine says, inching closer to the behemoth lurking in the shadows, not taking her eyes off him. “I’d like you to meet my son. Quill Brody. All the children like to escape, but none of them are as good at it as my boy.”

Is that a note of pride in her voice?

“Clan will take him home on occasion, for short visits, if he’s good. Isn’t that right, Quill?” The man makes no indication he’s heard. “Sometimes on those visits, he likes to get out and visit the neighborhood houses—play in the alleys, mess with the garbage, open and close windows. Maybe you’ve seen him? Clan covers for his son, as any father would.”

She’s abreast of him. Slowly, she steps back so she can face me while keeping an eye on him.

“Now you see why we need fresh blood. Why we needed you.” She points at my belly.

Quill shambles forward. Catherine flinches, but he’s not looking at her, only me. That’s when I notice his hand-wound music box. He begins to crank it. A hurdy-gurdy lullaby slithers out. When the music begins to slow, he cranks it again, never breaking eye contact. He’s so close I can feel his heat.

I look away, but not before I see the figure-eight scar on his left arm, identical to mine and Deck’s. Sometimes certain bloodlines will have a similar adverse reaction to a vaccination. It’s uncommon but not unheard of.

All of us Lily children likely have one. It was Kris whose scar was a coincidence.

Quill is cranking the music box faster and faster.

“He played that for you when you were little,” Dorothy is saying from behind me. “Remember? He played with you during your only day at Lilydale kindergarten, visited you in the basement at Dorothy’s.”

I smile a crazy grin, my eyes spinning. I feel a rupture, and then my underpants grow so wet that moisture runs down my legs.

I drop to my knees.

Not now, baby, not now. Please don’t be born down here.





CHAPTER 64

The Mothers hurry me back to the lemon-yellow room. Call Dr. Krause, and then the men. Watch, as he gives me a shot, and then as my sweet baby is born. Cheer like they are watching a football game. Take my child, leaving me behind to drift in and out of consciousness.

As I suspected they would.

But here I am.

Clean. Rested. Hydrated. Fed. Propped up with Geritol and Pop-Tarts.

As strong as I’m going to get.

It’s time for me to join them.

It’s time for me to get my child (Frances, I will call the baby, boy or girl; God, what my mother sacrificed for me) and escape Lilydale, for real this time. Forever.

Barbara is the first person I encounter. She’s at the bottom of the stairs, knitting, but hurries to her feet when she spots me. “Oh, no, dear, you need to lie down.” She tries to guide me back to bed.

I seize her wrist. “Please tell me my baby’s all right.”

She pats my cheek. “Well, of course your baby’s fine, dear.”

I try to smile. “I want to see my child.”

“I’m afraid now isn’t a good time.”

I stagger to the nearest window, the one facing the driveway between this house and Deck’s. The neighbors have gathered. All the Mothers and the Fathers. My eyes devour them, hungry for sight of my child. My plan requires me to appear detached and stable, but I can’t help it. The desperation to hold my infant, to feed him, is primal.