Gheist

by Richard Mosses

  “You’ll be alive. And who knows, maybe one day you’ll pay what you owe and get your heart back. I doubt it. But there you go.” Danton rose and stepped away.

  This made no sense. How could they take her heart, but she’d still be alive?

  Jar Guy put it down on the floor beside her and took the top off. Kat remembered where she’d seen something like it. Long ago in primary school. The class had spent a whole term on Ancient Egypt. Coptic, no Canopic Jars. But there were no animal heads on the lid of this one, and weren’t they for lungs and stomach? It was coming back to her now. Hearts were weighed against the feather of Ma’at to see if you’d been naughty or nice.

  He reached inside and his hand came out with nothing. Or did it? When he waved the hand in front of Kat, chanting something in a language she didn’t know, it had a smoky darkness around it like he’d grabbed a handful of exhaust fumes. He stepped forward and thrust this hand at her chest. It passed right through her shirt and through that key, through the skin and the bone.

  It happened so quickly she barely had time to react. One moment she thought he was going to grab her breast and was turning away, the next he was wrist deep inside her chest. She didn’t feel anything except a chill breeze that caused her skin to come out in goose bumps.

  She felt fingers curling around her heart. Her breathing got short and sweat beaded on her forehead. Kat’s chest felt tight like she needed to cough up catarrh. The guy pulled his hand back and her torso came with it, like grotesque puppetry. She rose up from the chair, arms still bound, back arched, the muscles in her legs and shoulders strained and quivering, the chair tipped back onto its rear wheels, her neck rested on the chair-back. He gave another tug and Kat collapsed back into the seat, hair falling across her eyes.

  The guy held her heart in his hand – it was pumping air, glistening in the light from the fluorescent strips, wreathed in that dirty smoke. How was that possible? He’d taken her heart. He pushed his hand into the jar, brought it out empty, put the lid on and picked it up again. She was frozen in place. Her eyes couldn’t move from the jar. Her mind went away.

  When she came back, Danton took out a flick knife, and Kat knew this was really it. He stepped forward, the knife heading towards her. Wasn’t this the wrong way round? What the fuck was going on? Danton slashed the duct tape. Kat tried to jump out of the chair and out of his reach, but she couldn’t breathe, had no strength. Her limbs crumpled beneath her and she was left gasping on the concrete.

  “Take it easy,” Danton said. “You’ve got no heart, remember.” He put the knife away. “You want it back? You know what you got to do.”

  The three guys left while the room span around. Kat lay on her back and looked at the cracks in the ceiling. Her heart was still in her chest, wasn’t it? As they walked away, its panicked beat felt fainter. How could this be? It was a con trick, an illusion, another Vegas show for the punters. She tried to reach over, her arm was heavy and lifeless like she’d slept on it and it had gone to sleep. It felt remote, heavy and numb.

  What had they done to her? Maybe they’d drugged her again. Another tranquiliser, or some kind of hallucinogen. But her mind felt clear. She’d just have to wait for it to wear off.

  She tried to find her pulse in her wrist.

  Nothing. Maybe she was doing it wrong. With great difficulty she changed wrists. Fumbled at her neck. Felt her chest with her hand. There was nothing.

  After a while the heaviness changed from concrete to wet sand. Kat tried to peel off the shreds of duct tape. Barely able to control her hands well enough to catch a ragged edge it took ages. The effort to control her arms, to pull the sticky fibrous mess, was almost too much. After what seemed like an hour some control returned – it was wearing off – and she left the silver peelings on the floor by the chair.

  Standing was just as much of a challenge. Her legs didn’t feel strong enough to take her weight. When she got off her knees her legs were like rubber posts. Kat thought about crawling to the door, but she’d rip her skin on the rough concrete floor. Slumped in the chair she waited. She may even have slept for a while. Without windows it was hard to be sure.

  Her legs got back some feeling, but still felt spongy. She pushed the chair backwards towards the door, the Judas wheel squeaking and getting caught in pits that she had to rock the chair out.

  Against the wall beside the metal door was her wheelie case. Kat got off the chair. It was still hard to stay up, but it was better. Moving the case took a lot of effort, so it must have her stuff in it. Even opening the door took more strength than it should and tired her out enough that Kat had to wait a few minutes before she climbed the concrete stairs to street level, one step at a time, dragging the case up after her.

  Tentatively, she tried to find her pulse again. Nothing. Either wrist. Not in her neck. Nowhere she could think to look. The heaviness of her limbs had eased but hadn’t completely gone. Either the drug would take much longer to fully go, or they’d done something else to her. Hypnosis maybe. Or they’d actually taken her heart, and that was why she felt so drained, so weak.

  It wasn’t possible, but it’s what she’d seen, what she’d experienced. A feeling of nausea rose up, the bite of acid in the back of her throat. But nothing came up. Beyond the sickness, and the feebleness, she had been used.

  She’d never told Tony about her only one night stand, before she met him. Kat had felt raw, sore, and hollow. Cheap and discarded. Angry and alone. She’d vowed never to do it again, tried not to think about it. Tony helped her break that vow. But a lot of that night was coming back to her. However, it felt clinical. Like she was experiencing it through a rubber membrane. Why wasn’t she able to feel it? Was this another side effect of what had been done to her?

  She pulled up and sat on her case for a few minutes while she caught her breath. The sky was cobalt and chrome, Kat had to squint to see. It must be early afternoon, and she was in a back street in some kind of industrial area. She could smell thick engine grease and gasoline exhaust. Maybe she was near the airport?

  Kat had thought she had nothing before, but people in the gutter could look down on her. All she’d had to do was walk away while she was winning. Gambling was like an infection, transmitted to her by Tony, with an itch she really needed to scratch.

  Rocking it onto the concrete, Kat unzipped her case. Lying on top was that dress. There was a dumpster over against a wall. She got halfway there before she had to stop to rest. As much as she hated it, it was an asset. Even second hand or pawned it was worth a few hundred dollars. She’d even left the tags on it. She had intended to return it, hadn’t she? Guess she’d never know.

  Something else was wrong. She wasn’t in pain anymore. Putting the dress over her shoulder Kat gently probed her side. It felt tender, but nothing like the sharp pain she was used to from just breathing too hard. She looked about then lifted her t-shirt. Her side was still a negative image of a rainbow. This was very wrong. All of this was very, very wrong. She couldn’t feel pain. Could barely feel anger, or sorrow, or despair. Her body barely worked. She needed to find somewhere, try to sleep, hopefully it would wear off by morning.

  Kat returned to her case which looked like a turtle cracked open. She found her purse. She was surprised that there were a few hundred dollars folded in there. She zipped the case back together, put her sunglasses on and already exhausted started the long halting walk to a road where she could find a taxi.

  6

  Kat threw open the door to her motel room, hoping that sudden sunlight would scare off anything crawling in there. It had been a long shift at the diner and she just wanted to shower off the stale smell of fat and get some sleep.

  She’d done pretty well for herself, considering. Finding a cheap room was relatively easy, it was more a question of how low your standards were than how much you had to pay. Waiting tables again not so much. Some places asked for résumés, could you believe it? For waitressing? She had ancient experience, but no access to printers a
nd paper. Those few hundreds in her purse had kept speaking to her, demanding to be taken into a place on the Strip and put down on black. Those first few days though she barely had the strength to move for a few minutes. Inertia saved her where her will was weak.

  She’d tried to sleep that first night, but she kept reliving the moment her heart was torn from her chest. That moment the resistance was overcame, and she rocked back. Seeing it in the guy’s hand, spasming. Eventually exhaustion took her into darkness. When she woke up the heavy drugged feeling remained.

  Most of that first day she only pulled herself from her bed to care for her basic needs. Each time it felt like she was clawing her way out of a grave. She just lay in silence, checking for a pulse every few minutes, hoping this would pass. And another night was spent watching beams from headlights cross the ceiling.

  The second day, she needed to eat. She pulled on her worn and dirty clothes, and made it to a bodega on the corner, bought snacks, chocolate and soda. The return journey took her about an hour. If anyone noticed, she must have looked completely stoned.

  That night she realised she had to accept that this was likely to be the new normal. Making the effort had been hard, but it made it easier the next time. And her heart was gone. Robbed.

  The Fool’s Gold Diner was a bus ride away, and she’d accepted the graveyard shift readily enough, as she’d fit right in with the rest of the skeleton crew. She knew everyone else was getting paid at least minimum wage. Still at least it was more than just tips and was better than turning tricks, or hoping she turned over the right card.

  It was a regular place, the same staff, the same punters, all going about their day like clockwork. She knew she only had an hour to go when Jim McCabe came in for his breakfast and asked her if she knew his cousin who lived in Ullapool. She had put the cream in his coffee and ordered the pancakes and bacon before he’d even taken his cap off.

  Kat checked for bugs in the shower and turned it on so it could heat up. A downside of coming home in the morning was everyone leaving for work had used up all the water. She looked at her side in the cracked mirror over the sink. A few faint ripples of purple remained and it didn’t hurt at all now. Nothing did. She’d slopped hot coffee on her leg and cut her hand on a broken glass and both times she’d not noticed until Jeanie or Florence had fussed over her. Was she actually dead? Not being in pain had a certain peacefulness to it, but not feeling anything should be alarming. However, she couldn’t even feel bothered. She aught to feel anger, pain, a desire for revenge, but there was only the intellectual wish to get back what was hers, and a sensible voice kept telling her she didn’t have the strength, the power or the opportunity.

  Under the warm water, Kat washed the day off her. She still had most of the bills Danton had left her, and all the money from the dress. She didn’t do anything but work and sleep at home, watch a few shows when she got up. She ate almost all her meals in the diner. Slowly she was getting some money together. To do what, though? Kat didn’t care. She couldn’t seem to care about anything.

  She’d hated the news before, a thin window onto the world’s pain. Now it meant nothing to her. There were plenty of vagrants in this end of town, sleeping on the sidewalks like they were queuing for a phone launch. It would have broken her heart once. It wasn’t that she’d grown hard, built a defensive screen, there was just no capacity in her for compassion. This bothered her, as much as it could, but no more than losing an eyelash, or slicing her arm open. Not that she’d thought of ending it, not seriously. This all would pass.

  Kat was drying herself when she heard someone moving in her room. The door was locked. She always made sure. Had the Super come in to fix something, not realising she was home? The cleaning girls knew not to bug her before noon.

  She put her dirty clothes back on. Once she’d have been repulsed by the sticky feel against her skin. Kat opened the door a crack. Someone was there alright, a silhouette against the thin orange curtains. The front door was shut. She closed the door again and rested her back against it. Shouldn’t she be panicking, needing to calm herself? All she had in here was a toothbrush and some toiletries. She picked up a can of deodorant, weighed it in her hand.

  “I’d like you to leave please,” Kat said loud and clear. “Leave or I’ll call the police.” She didn’t really have a mobile but who else didn’t? There was no sound, no door opening.

  Kat peeked out the bathroom door again. The silhouette was still there. She stepped into the bedroom. “I asked you to leave.” This could be no worse than the rare drunk in the diner; she just needed to be firm and unthreatening. “Please go or I’ll call the cops.” It was a guy, for sure. He didn’t move. It was like he wasn’t even breathing. Staying out of reach Kat unchained the door and opened it, letting in the light and the Spanish of the cleaning crew gossiping.

  “Come on.” She gestured out the door. The guy looked pretty out of it. Totally vacant eyes. Didn’t even look at her. Kat wasn’t worried about being robbed. She didn’t keep anything valuable in her room, but she was concerned about how easily this guy had gotten in. Wait a minute. He’d slipped the security chain back into place.

  Kat stepped out into the lot. “Connie?” she called. “Connie? Can you call the Super for me? There’s some guy in my room.”

  Connie came out of a room a few doors down, throwing some soiled towels into the bag slung behind her cart. “What is it, Kat?” It had taken Kat a while to get her to stop calling her Miss, or even Katrina. In return Consuela insisted Kat call her Connie.

  “There’s some guy in my room, he won’t leave.”

  Connie left her cart, perhaps hearing the calm in Kat’s voice, walked over and looked in the room. “No one here now. Where did he go?”

  “What?” Kat actually felt something leak through the thick padding that surrounded her. “I’ve not moved from here. He couldn’t have gotten past me.” She looked in her room. No one was there.

  “You feeling okay, Kat? You sleeping okay? You working too hard?” Connie touched Kat’s forearm.

  “I’m…” How could the guy have just gone? “I’m fine, thanks.” But clearly she wasn’t, thanks to Danton and his goons. Would she ever be? “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  Connie smiled. “Don’t worry about it. We ladies got to look after each other. He’s gone. You should see if Stefan has another room, maybe?” She left Kat and went back to her cart.

  Kat shut the door. Put it on the chain. Wedged the chair under the knob and even moved the table across it. Even so, it took her ages to fall asleep and then the alarm was ringing again.

  7

  Kat got up in the afternoon. She knew she should be unsettled, scared even, but it was another thing that had been taken from her. In the Laundromat she sorted her clothes and put some washes on. While her clothes spun in suds and dried in the big drums she liked to sit in the sun and watch the world go by. At least she could do that here. In Scotland she’d have thrown the wash in the machine in the kitchen and rushed off to meet her pals or watched Corrie. In her flat hardship was the Wi-Fi going down. Outside it would have been raining. She’d tried reading a book while she waited - she used to read a lot when she was a kid, before the Internet gave her social media and shopping sites, but it didn’t do anything for her anymore. They’d taken more from her than just her heart. One day she’d get it back.

  What was she gonna do with herself? How many years of waiting tables would it take for her to get together the money she owed Danton? 30? 40? If she saved hard and did nothing with her money. Putting it in a bank might earn her some interest and knock a year or two off. But she was an illegal alien, no better off than the Mexicans or Colombians she shared the neighbourhood with. She was paid cash, and not as much as the legal minimum.

  Perhaps she should just go home, forget about her heart? Seemed she could get by without it anyway. On the bus to work Kat saw the real America, people all dreaming of doing better, of getting their big break, thank Jesus. People
who, let’s face it, weren’t white. Coming from a more cynical and dour nation she didn’t see anyone getting out alive. So who was she kidding? If she went back home she’d be just as dead as if she stayed. This way she’d save an airfare and keep the sunshine. She’d go home if Immigration deported her.

  “Double bacon on toasted rye, two eggs over easy and a side of pancakes?” Kat asked Mr Simmons as he climbed into the booth. No first names with him, even though he sat in the same booth every midnight and ate the same breakfast before heading to his shift in the bowels of one of the casinos. Kat poured him his coffee.

  “Sure,” said Mr Simmons, taking off his cap.

  Kat went off to get his order.

  Two hours later and the guy from her room was there, standing in the middle of the diner, not moving. Kat nearly dropped the plates she was carrying. She managed to put these down in front of her customers without spilling anything. Had he followed her here? Was he stalking her?

  “Sir, if you take a seat I can take your order,” she said.

  The guy just stood there. Eyes rolled back to show the whites. He was no silhouette here under the diner’s strip lighting. His shirt was dirty and torn, his jeans too. This didn’t look like the careful wear of expensive clothes, more like he’d been dragged along a rough road. Given how he looked she expected him to smell like the guys sleeping on the sidewalk, but all she could smell was frying bacon and coffee grounds.

  “Sir, please take a seat. There’s a booth right over here.”

  Still no response. She caught the looks on the regulars’ faces. She must have raised her voice too loud.

  “Kat? Who you talkin’ to?” said Florence, the other waitress on the shift.

  Kat turned to point to the guy, but he was gone.