The Whimwick Harvest

The Orphans of Whimwick

GIDEON VEY

Chapter One

The Child Who Remembered Neris

The girl who stepped through the impossible door was nine years old, barefoot, and carrying Neris’s first memory.

She held it cupped between both hands.

Inside the glass marble, a little girl sat beneath a kitchen table while two women argued above her.

One of the women was Audra Vallowen.

The child beneath the table was Neris.

The vacant storefront at Mercy Bell Commons had no electricity, no merchandise, and no interior door. Neris had confirmed all three before the wall opened.

Now autumn leaves moved across a floor that had been sealed from the outside for sixteen years.

They came through the doorway in small, dry spirals.

Beyond it, afternoon sunlight illuminated a narrow road bordered by trees burning red and gold. A white building stood at the top of a distant hill. Its windows reflected a sky that did not exist over Lornbridge.

Toren Brask rose from the curb.

His coffee struck the pavement and burst across his shoes.

“Neris.”

“I see her.”

The girl remained inside the doorway.

A thin white nightgown hung to her knees. Mud darkened its hem. A strip of adhesive marked the inside of her left arm where an intravenous line had recently been removed. Her brown hair had been cut unevenly, as if someone had shortened it while she slept.

She watched Neris without blinking.

Behind her, the road curved toward the white building.

Children stood along both sides of it.

Dozens of them.

Some wore school uniforms. Others wore hospital gowns, winter coats, or clothing from decades Neris recognized only from photographs. None moved. Their faces remained turned toward the doorway.

Toward her.

Toren reached beneath his jacket.

“Don’t,” Neris said.

“I wasn’t planning to shoot a child.”

“Then leave the gun alone.”

“I was planning to shoot whatever followed her.”

Nothing followed.

The girl took one step onto the dusty floor.

The doorway flickered behind her.

For an instant, Neris saw something enormous moving between the trees. It passed behind the white building, tall enough for its shoulders to rise above the roof.

Then the sunlight returned.

The girl extended the marble.

“You forgot this.”

Her voice was soft but certain.

Neris did not approach her.

Three weeks earlier, Whimwick Halloween had used familiar faces, stolen voices, altered photographs, and memories that did not belong to the people carrying them. It had reached through telephones, mirrors, computer screens, and locked doors.

A child was not proof of innocence.

“What’s your name?” Neris asked.

The girl looked at Toren.

“He still doesn’t believe you when you tell him you’re afraid.”

Toren’s hand stopped inside his jacket.

Neris felt the registry beneath her arm.

She had brought it back to Mercy Bell Commons because the nine circles on its map had changed overnight. Eight remained black. The closest had turned orange.

She had expected a location.

She had not expected a door.

“How do you know that?” Toren asked.

The girl returned her attention to Neris.

“He didn’t believe you in the car either.”

Rain struck a windshield inside Neris’s mind.

She saw the dark road leading into Lornbridge. Her dead sister’s name glowing on the dashboard. Toren’s voice coming through the phone after she reported the light in Ione’s bedroom.

Stay in your vehicle.

She remembered ending the call.

Then she got out.

No one else had been inside the car.

“What did she tell you?” Neris asked.

“Who?”

“The woman who sent you.”

The child’s hands closed around the marble.

“They told me you would say that.”

“They?”

“The mothers.”

Toren drew his weapon.

The girl flinched.

Every child beyond the doorway turned toward him at once.

“Put it away,” Neris said.

“Neris, look behind her.”

“I am.”

“No. Look at their feet.”

The children cast shadows across the road.

The shadows did not match them.

A small boy in a red sweater cast the outline of a grown man. A girl holding a stuffed rabbit cast the shape of an elderly woman with a bent back. Other shadows joined together, forming long black branches that reached across the road toward the white building.

The barefoot girl had no shadow at all.

Toren lowered the gun but did not holster it.

“What is this place?”

The girl answered without turning.

“Home.”

One of the distant children began walking toward the doorway.

His body remained still.

Only his shadow moved.

It stretched across the road, passed over the girl’s bare feet, and entered the vacant store.

The temperature fell.

Neris smelled boiled cabbage, furniture polish, and smoke.

Not the smoke from Whimwick.

This was older.

She knew it before the memory opened.

Neris was six years old again, standing in the entrance hall of the Brindle County Home. Orenza Bell knelt before her with both hands resting on Neris’s shoulders.

You and your sister will stay together.

Behind Orenza stood a woman Neris could not see clearly. A veil covered her face. One pale hand rested against the banister.

Neris had lived with that memory for most of her life.

What happened next had always been missing.

The shadow supplied it.

Orenza rose and walked away.

The veiled woman crouched.

She touched Neris beneath the chin.

A copper ring circled her index finger. Its surface had been carved with tiny open mouths.

You are not Neris yet, the woman said.

“What did she call me?” Neris whispered.

The barefoot girl smiled.

Not like a child pleased with herself.

Like someone relieved that a key still fit.

“Nerysse.”

The vacant store disappeared.

Neris stood beneath the kitchen table from the marble.

She was four or five. Too young to have lived at Brindle County Home. Too young to remember Audra. Yet Audra’s shoes stood on the other side of the tablecloth.

Another woman faced her.

Neris could not see the second woman’s face, only the hem of her gray dress and the pointed toes of black boots.

“You were supposed to leave both girls unformed,” the stranger said.

“Ione was unsuitable,” Audra answered. “She retained too much.”

“Then drain her.”

“She is attached to this one.”

“A temporary condition.”

Young Neris pressed both hands over her mouth.

Audra lowered her voice.

“What name did the foundation assign?”

“Nerysse Varryn.”

“That sounds too much like hers.”

“It was hers before you made her forget it.”

The kitchen vanished.

Neris returned to the vacant store on her knees.

Toren caught her before her forehead struck the floor.

The registry slid from beneath her arm.

It landed open.

The map had disappeared.

A single entry occupied the page.

VARRYN, NERYSSE

STATUS: UNFINISHED PLACEMENT

ASSIGNED MOTHER: AUDRA VALLOWEN

RESERVE CLASSIFICATION: UNMEASURED

RECOVERY AUTHORIZATION: ACTIVE

Beneath the entry, wet ink formed another line.

SUBSTITUTE RETURNED.

Toren read it over her shoulder.

“What substitute?”

Neris looked at the child.

The girl still held the marble.

“Me,” she said.

The doorway began closing.

The road narrowed between two edges of crumbling plaster. The silent children remained in place, but their shadows rushed toward the opening.

“Neris,” Toren said. “We need to move.”

The girl looked behind her.

Fear entered her face for the first time.

Not surprise.

Recognition.

“They found the door.”

A bell rang beyond the white building.

Every child on the road opened their mouth.

No sound emerged from them.

The thing behind the building stepped into view.

It was a woman.

Or it had once been.

She wore a dark dress with a white collar, the severe uniform of a nineteenth-century caretaker. Her body rose higher than the trees because hundreds of smaller bodies stood beneath her clothing, holding her upright.

Children’s hands emerged from her sleeves.

Children’s faces opened and closed inside the folds of her skirt.

Where the woman’s head should have been, a wooden sign swung from an iron chain.

ST. ORISON HOME FOR FOUNDLINGS

ESTABLISHED 1888

NO CHILD LEAVES UNCHOSEN

The woman turned toward the doorway.

The sign hanging above her shoulders changed.

One word disappeared.

ST. ORISON HOME FOR FOUNDLINGS

ESTABLISHED 1888

NO CHILD LEAVES

“Run,” the girl said.

The children’s shadows reached the threshold.

Neris pushed herself upright and seized the girl beneath the arms.

The child weighed almost nothing.

Toren grabbed the registry.

They ran.

The door slammed shut behind them.

Something struck the other side.

The impact shook dust from the ceiling and cracked the plaster from the floor to the roofline.

Toren aimed at the wall.

A second impact bent it outward.

The girl buried her face against Neris’s shoulder.

“Don’t let her hear my name.”

“What name?”

Another blow landed.

The girl whispered into Neris’s coat.

“Elsin.”

The wall split.

Black fingers pushed through.

Each finger belonged to a different hand. Some were small and soft. Others were withered with age. They clawed at the plaster, widening the opening one inch at a time.

Toren fired.

The shot struck a woman’s palm.

A child screamed from somewhere behind the wall.

Toren lowered the weapon in horror.

The fingers continued tearing.

“Outside,” Neris said.

They crossed the vacant store.

The front doors had been chained shut when they arrived. Toren raised the registry and smashed its metal corner against the glass.

Once.

Twice.

The third strike created a web of cracks.

Neris turned sideways and shielded Elsin with her body.

Toren drove his heel into the glass.

It collapsed outward.

They climbed through the opening into the parking lot.

Behind them, the interior wall burst.

A wave of autumn leaves filled the empty store.

The leaves did not scatter randomly.

They moved like a single living thing, crossing the floor in pursuit of them.

Toren caught Neris by the arm.

“Car.”

They ran toward his unmarked sedan.

Neris carried Elsin against her chest. The child’s bare legs struck her hips with every step, but Elsin made no sound. Her eyes remained fixed on the broken storefront.

The leaves poured through the shattered entrance.

Each one carried a name written across its surface.

Neris saw them as they scraped over the pavement.

MAVENRY DOSS.

TERREL QUINCE.

ORLAITH BREN.

JONNICK VALE.

SAELA VOSSEN.

Hundreds followed.

Some names had been crossed out.

Others had dates written beneath them.

A few bore the word PLACED.

Toren reached the sedan and pulled open the rear door.

Neris set Elsin inside.

The girl seized her sleeve.

“She can’t cross if you don’t take anything else.”

Neris looked down.

The glass marble remained in Elsin’s hand.

“You brought that through.”

“It belongs to you.”

“It came from her.”

“No. She stole it from the girl they made you from.”

A scraping noise crossed the parking lot.

The leaves stopped.

They gathered themselves into a woman’s silhouette.

She stood between the sedan and the vacant store, her body made from hundreds of stolen names.

The wooden sign hung where her head should have been.

Its lettering shifted.

RETURN ELSIN VOSSEN.

Elsin pressed herself against the far door.

“She knows.”

“Neris,” Toren said.

The leaf-woman moved toward them.

Toren fired twice.

The bullets passed through her and struck the empty storefront.

The names broke apart, swirled, and reassembled.

RETURN ELSIN VOSSEN.

Neris climbed into the back seat.

Toren ran around the front of the car and got behind the wheel.

The engine would not start.

He turned the key again.

Nothing.

The leaf-woman reached the trunk.

A dozen children spoke through her at once.

“Elsin Vossen is the legal property of St. Orison Family Services.”

Toren tried the ignition a third time.

The dashboard came alive.

Every screen displayed the same message.

PLACEMENT TRANSFER IN PROGRESS.

“No,” Elsin whispered.

The rear doors locked.

Neris pulled the handle.

It refused to move.

Toren struck the controls.

The locks clicked but remained down.

Outside, the leaf-woman reached the driver’s window.

Children’s fingers unfolded from her arm.

They flattened themselves against the glass.

“Elsin Vossen was surrendered voluntarily.”

“I wasn’t,” Elsin said.

“Elsin Vossen possesses no surviving parent or legal guardian.”

“My mother is alive.”

“Elsin Vossen has been approved for permanent placement.”

The child began shaking.

The marble brightened inside her hands.

Neris saw another memory moving within it.

A bedroom with yellow wallpaper.

A paper moon hanging above a crib.

A woman singing softly.

Not Audra.

Not Morwen.

The woman turned toward the crib, and Neris saw her own eyes inside a face she did not recognize.

The memory ended before she could see more.

“Who is she?” Neris asked.

Elsin stared into the marble.

“You.”

The fingers outside the sedan curled.

The window groaned.

Neris took the registry from Toren.

The entry bearing her original name remained on the open page.

RECOVERY AUTHORIZATION: ACTIVE.

She pressed her thumb against the words.

Orange light moved beneath her skin.

Whimwick had returned the emotions it stole and released the children hidden inside its displays. It had also left something behind in Neris.

Not its power.

Its recognition of her.

The network still believed she held authority.

Perhaps this one would too.

Neris placed her hand against the window.

“Placement denied.”

The children’s voices stopped.

The fingers remained against the glass.

Letters appeared across the registry.

AUTHORITY NOT RECOGNIZED.

Neris remembered the badge Whimwick had given her.

Regional Continuity.

She had left it on the pavement three weeks ago.

It had disappeared before sunrise.

“I am Neris Vallowen,” she said. “Formerly Nerysse Varryn. Assigned placement under Audra Vallowen.”

A pause followed.

The leaf-woman leaned closer.

The wooden sign nearly touched the window.

“Assigned children cannot deny subsequent placements.”

“I’m not assigned anymore.”

“Status remains unfinished.”

“Then finish it.”

The registry trembled.

The entry changed.

VARRYN, NERYSSE

STATUS: UNFINISHED PLACEMENT

AVAILABLE YEARS: THIRTY-EIGHT

MATERNAL ELIGIBILITY: CONFIRMED

Neris stopped breathing.

Toren read the entry from the front seat.

“What does maternal eligibility mean?”

Elsin began crying.

The leaf-woman answered.

“Nerysse Varryn is eligible to receive one child.”

Neris understood.

This was not an attempt to recover Elsin.

It was a delivery.

The child had called herself a substitute.

Whimwick’s women adopted children to consume whatever life remained inside them. Audra had taken Neris and Ione. Other women had raised children who became sick, suffered accidents, or died without explanation while their mothers emerged stronger.

Whimwick collected emotion.

This place collected years.

“No,” Neris said.

The registry wrote beneath her hand.

PLACEMENT ACCEPTED.

A mark appeared on the inside of Neris’s wrist.

A small black circle enclosing the number nine.

Elsin screamed.

The sedan’s doors unlocked.

Toren started the engine.

The leaf-woman collapsed.

Hundreds of leaves struck the windows and streamed across the roof as he reversed. The tires spun through puddles before finding traction.

He drove toward the parking-lot exit.

Neris looked back.

The leaves remained scattered across the pavement.

The vacant storefront stood open behind them.

The impossible door was gone.

So was the crack in the interior wall.

Only the shattered entrance proved anything had happened.

Toren turned onto the access road.

“Where are we going?”

“Police station.”

“No.”

The force in Elsin’s voice silenced them both.

She sat upright and wiped her face with both hands.

“You can’t take me anywhere with cameras.”

“Why?” Toren asked.

“The mothers watch through them.”

“Security cameras?”

“All cameras.”

“That isn’t possible.”

Elsin looked at him.

“You saw a woman made of children walk through a wall.”

Toren tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

“Fair point.”

Neris studied the mark on her wrist.

It resembled one of the circles from Whimwick’s map. The number inside it had begun as a nine.

Now it read eight.

“What happens when it reaches zero?”

Elsin glanced down.

“They come to inspect the placement.”

“Who?”

“The mothers.”

“How much time does each number represent?”

“One day.”

Toren looked at them in the mirror.

“We have eight days?”

Elsin shook her head.

“It changes every time she finds us.”

The dashboard clock went black.

When it returned, the number on Neris’s wrist became seven.

Toren pulled onto the shoulder.

“No. We’re not doing the impossible countdown thing again without answers.”

A truck passed them, spraying water across the windshield.

Neris shifted toward Elsin.

“Tell me what St. Orison is.”

“A home.”

“I saw the sign.”

“That’s what it used to be. Now it has offices, schools, clinics, and houses.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“Where did you come from?”

Elsin looked out the window.

“Vesper County.”

Neris knew the name.

It lay two states east, in the foothills of western Pennsylvania. Its largest city, Bellwether, had been built around a steel industry that no longer existed. The population had fallen for decades before reversing suddenly twelve years ago.

News organizations called it the Bellwether Miracle.

A private foundation had purchased abandoned neighborhoods, reopened schools, funded a children’s hospital, and created one of the most successful foster-placement programs in the country.

Neris had read about it.

She had nearly written about it.

“What is the foundation called?” she asked, although she already knew.

Elsin answered.

“The Orison Foundation for Children and Families.”

Its executive director appeared in Neris’s memory.

Dr. Ysoria Creel.

A nationally recognized child-welfare advocate. Television interviews. Congressional testimony. Photographs with governors, celebrities, and adoptive families.

Her silver hair was always gathered at the base of her neck.

Her face was serene, sympathetic, and strangely difficult to remember after looking away.

“How old is Dr. Creel?” Neris asked.

Elsin turned from the window.

“Which time?”

Toren looked at Neris.

She continued.

“How many children live at St. Orison?”

“None.”

“We saw them.”

“They aren’t living there.”

The sedan became very quiet.

“What does that mean?” Toren asked.

Elsin lowered her voice.

“The mothers don’t keep bodies they can’t place. They keep what the bodies remember.”

Neris looked at the marble.

“My memory.”

“The first one they took from you.”

“Why do you have it?”

“Because I was supposed to become you.”

The answer landed without meaning.

Neris waited for her mind to reject it.

It did not.

“Explain.”

Elsin held the marble toward the window. Gray daylight moved through the glass, illuminating the tiny kitchen inside.

“The foundation keeps unfinished children. Children whose placements failed. Children who remembered their first names or their real parents. Children who saw what their mothers did.”

“You’re one of them.”

“I was.”

“What changed?”

“They found your record.”

The number on Neris’s wrist remained seven.

Outside, Lornbridge passed in wet, familiar pieces. Houses. Closed businesses. Halloween decorations sagging beneath the rain.

Families inside those homes had begun remembering what Whimwick took from them. Police departments throughout the country were reopening missing-person cases. Hospitals were reporting unidentified children who had appeared without warning. Women with no verifiable histories were abandoning homes before investigators could question them.

Neris had believed the network was collapsing.

Perhaps it had only been separating itself into parts.

“What did my record say?” she asked.

“That your placement never finished.”

“I lived with Audra for decades.”

“She made you forget. She changed your name. But she never collected you.”

“Collected what?”

“Your years.”

Neris’s stomach tightened.

“How are years collected?”

Elsin pressed her lips together.

Toren spoke gently.

“You don’t have to tell us everything at once.”

“Yes, she does,” Neris said.

He looked back at her.

“If something is coming for her, I need to know what it is.”

Elsin watched the rain.

“The mothers adopt children because they cannot make their own. Not because they want daughters or sons. They need someone to grow beside them.”

“Why?”

“Years don’t stay alive by themselves. They have to be attached to someone.”

Neris remembered children in photographs aging while their mothers remained unchanged.

“What happens when the child dies?”

“The years go to the mother.”

“All of them?”

“Only the ones the child didn’t use.”

The number on Neris’s wrist changed to six.

Elsin recoiled from her.

“She found us again.”

“Who found us?”

“The first mother.”

The sedan’s navigation screen turned on.

Toren had not touched it.

A map appeared.

The route began at Mercy Bell Commons and traveled east through Ohio into Pennsylvania.

Its destination was a white building outside Bellwether.

ST. ORISON FAMILY PRESERVATION CAMPUS.

Estimated travel time:

Four hours, twelve minutes.

Beneath it, a second line appeared.

PLACEMENT INSPECTION: SIX HOURS.

Toren shut off the screen.

It turned itself back on.

He struck the power button again.

The route remained.

Neris opened the registry.

The map of nine cities had returned. One circle glowed orange over Bellwether, Pennsylvania.

A smaller circle moved along the road leaving Lornbridge.

It followed their car.

Morwen’s handwriting spread across the bottom of the page.

DO NOT TAKE THE CHILD TO BELLWETHER.

Neris read it twice.

Toren saw the message.

“That sounds like the first useful thing Morwen has ever told us.”

More writing appeared.

SHE IS NOT RUNNING FROM THEM.

SHE IS HOW THEY FOUND YOU.

Elsin lunged for the registry.

Neris pulled it away.

The girl’s fingernails scraped across the page.

For a moment, her face changed.

An adult woman stared through it.

She had Neris’s eyes.

Then Elsin returned.

Toren hit the brakes.

The sedan stopped sideways across the empty road.

Neris pressed Elsin against the seat.

The child fought with sudden, desperate strength.

“Give it to me!”

“What are you?”

Elsin screamed.

The marble fell from her hand.

It struck the floor but did not break.

Inside it, the memory continued.

Young Neris crawled from beneath the kitchen table.

Audra and the woman in the gray dress were gone.

Someone else entered the room.

A girl.

She looked exactly like Elsin.

Not similar.

Not related.

The same uneven brown hair. The same narrow shoulders. The same pale mark beneath her left eye.

She crouched beside young Neris and whispered something.

The present-day Elsin stopped fighting.

Neris reached for the marble.

“Don’t.”

She picked it up.

The kitchen filled her vision.

Young Neris sat across from Elsin beneath the table.

Neither child could have been older than five.

“What did you tell me?” Neris asked.

Elsin closed her eyes.

In the memory, the little girl leaned forward.

“When they make you someone else,” she whispered, “I’ll remember who you were.”

The image dissolved.

Neris returned to the sedan.

Elsin had stopped struggling.

Tears moved silently down her face.

“That memory is thirty-four years old,” Neris said.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t aged.”

“No.”

“You said the mothers keep unfinished children.”

“Yes.”

“How long were you inside St. Orison?”

Elsin looked toward the road behind them.

“Thirty-four years.”

Toren swore beneath his breath.

“You’re not nine.”

“I am nine. I’ve been nine for a long time.”

“What did they do to you?”

“They made me wait.”

“For me?”

“For someone who could finish your placement.”

Neris looked again at the black circle on her wrist.

The number inside it changed to five.

This time, Elsin did not react.

Neris understood why.

The child was no longer afraid of being found.

She had already delivered what St. Orison wanted.

Not herself.

The mark.

Neris opened the registry to her entry.

New lines covered the page.

PROSPECTIVE MOTHER: NERYSSE VARRYN

PLACEMENT: ELSIN VOSSEN

CHILD’S PHYSICAL AGE: NINE

CHILD’S AVAILABLE YEARS: SIXTY-SEVEN

TRANSFER ELIGIBILITY: IMMEDIATE UPON DEATH

Neris stared at the final line.

Elsin’s voice became very small.

“That’s why you can’t let them take me back.”

Neris looked at her.

“Because they’ll kill you?”

“No.”

The girl’s gaze dropped to the mark on Neris’s wrist.

“Because now, if I die, you get the years.”

Chapter Two

Nine Black Circles

The first person to call Neris a mother was a woman who had been dead for seventy-two years.

Her voice came through Toren’s dashboard before either of them spoke again.

“Congratulations, Miss Varryn.”

The navigation screen remained fixed on the route to Bellwether, Pennsylvania. Beneath the map, the placement countdown displayed five hours and fifty-eight minutes.

Toren reached for the power button.

“Don’t,” Neris said.

The woman continued.

“St. Orison Family Services is pleased to confirm the provisional placement of Elsin Vossen into your home. Your willingness to nurture an unfinished child reflects the compassion, stability, and…

Her…