The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [120]
In this could he also provide her another service.
***
Salvatia maintained custody of the infant for as long as she could, as long as was necessary. She couldn’t keep him inside for too long, for either he’d eventually be discovered or surely die. And neither would be to her best interests.
A handful of months had passed since the child Dreg’s abduction now, and Salvatia had time and again fancied the repercussions of his disappearance from his home. His cries had been heard throughout the abandoned cannery all the way to the outside world, and those concerned who happened upon them had returned with moderate rescue teams who searched to no avail and departed empty-handed but with the notion that the property was haunted by a Wraith-child that existed only in the whimsical minds of the impressionable who may or may not have actually heard any cries at all. To them, the cries could have been anything. An infant’s footprints could have been anything, too. And no connection was ever made between this and the missing Erlandson child. The miles of separation had suited the scheme and fate was serving Salvatia well.
Until she had to snuff out the lives of those unfortunates who came sniffing about way too close for comfort.
That was remarkable, and it felt good to kill. It had been so long since Salvatia could even kill a cockroach.
How she cared for her Dreg child. She’d built him an inconspicuous makeshift nest. She changed him, kept him warm when he was in need of warmth, kept him cool in the Summer heat. She brought him food, brought him playthings; at times she’d bring to him other children’s half-broken toys, other times he was at play with living things such as, well, cockroaches. Or rats. They couldn’t infect him with their bites, whenever they did bite, and when their bites caused him to cry he would only play with them in angered roughness. And the silvery beast was always there to take away the pain.
Then, one day, without any effort of her own, the children came.
They arrived on their own, their curiosities sealing their fate...and particularly for one, who bore the honor of meeting the Wraith-child face to face, the one who ventured with his childhood chums into the treacherous innards of the dilapidated cannery on a capricious dare, the most innocent of the lot.
A little black boy by the name of Nigel.
The timing was impeccable.
Her Dreg child was at play with one of his most favorite venomous pets.
A black widow.
How quaint.
How climactic.
The time was at hand for Salvatia to release her beloved somehow, anonymously, and when the spider’s bite had been imposed upon the poor mortal boy...
...well, with the Dreg’s power imposed upon herself as it was, the watchful eyes of the dead resurrected through that power would make do and monitor him in her absence from that day forward.
On, until the final hour when she could use that Dreg to re-emerge into the real world fully, finally, and ultimately for all time....
34.
Simon BoLeve
-1975-
An overgrowth of hibiscus bushes cradled the overhanging metal casing of an electric signboard, a street-side sign situated before a tiny brick wall. The brick wall sprouted from behind the sign on both its left and right, extending and corralling the well-landscaped front lawn of the Church of the Divine Jesus Christ’s worldwide headquarters in Stanton, California. The plastic black replaceable letters of the sign was sequenced to read ALL WELCOME AND ENJOY THE FRUITS.
There was no other sign than that, for the Church of the Divine Jesus Christ was a Christian cult which didn’t believe in publicity, so its presence was ambiguous to the surrounding community. To most passers-by, the look and shape of the homely two-story brown building was like that