Ghost Heart

by John Palisano

  Please don’t kill me, I thought. Not like this. This can’t even be real. My God.

  Then there were more and more of them, the pale ones, crowded around me. The tendrils wrapped around my middle and my legs. One found the gun and pushed it loose. I felt it fall away and I broke out in panic. My backup was gone, and they’d probably think I was there to kill them, and then they were going to use it on me.

  Another tendril snaked around between my legs. It wrapped around my testicles and squeezed. That made me keep as still as I could. Every little adjustment hurt and made the tendrils squeeze tighter.

  What the hell does it want with me?

  Just don’t kill me. Let me go. I don’t want this.

  The ends of the tendrils hardened into pencil-like points. These further tightened into long, thin needles. They grazed along my shirt and pants, only to easily cut my clothes. Where they’d cut, the needles prodded through and found my skin. The needles slowly scratched along my chest and belly like a woman with long fingernails trying to seduce me, only I was far from turned on.

  Along my right side, between my top two ribs, a needle slid inside me. It was hot and felt as though it were covered in little, scratchy fiberglass fibers.

  It released something inside me—something I imagined was slick, oily and hot. The area went numb, and the numbness spread from my rib cage to the middle of my chest. The needle injected another small bit of it, and the numbness went even farther.

  On my other side, near my waistline, another needle prodded and then pierced my soft tissue. I felt it go deeper than the first needle, and it delivered its hot fluid right away. I had the rather distinct sensation of being paralyzed. I tried but could not move anything below my waist. My fingers still worked, though, and I wiggled them. As soon as I did, something covered them. It felt like a mouth. Meanwhile, the hot fluid within me traveled to my extremities and I found even moving my head impossible.

  To go with the feeling of being paralyzed? Euphoria. The room spun around me in the best way, as though I’d taken a pair of Percocet. There was no pain, and my fear seemed to lift, although, deep down I knew I had to be afraid of what was happening to me. I was the fly caught in the spider’s web. I told myself to fight.

  My eyes shut, despite my trying to keep them open. Behind my eyes the world opened up. At first I saw stars. Then I saw everything. My life rolled before me. Memories of my folks. My uncle. The shop. Several Christmases. Sledding down Flax Hill. All such wonderful things. I felt warm and comfortable in those memories in a way I never had before.

  Then? I knew the beast was watching, taking my memories, enjoying them and feeding on them.

  Red. That’s all I saw. My blood, racing around my body. It was as if I were inside my veins, swimming, seeing it all. There were little dark spots in the blood, too, but they got lighter. Soon they got larger, and then they turned red, then purple, then black as the blood around them lightened. This happened over and over and multiplied before my eyes, until the blood was nearly clear and the tissue around was pale and light. I was seeing what happened when someone had the Ghost Heart. And I knew its goal. Purity. Imperfections washed away. Evolution. A new wave. My old self disappeared, replaced with an idealized, perfected upgrade. But I remembered what Minarette had told me. The Ghost Heart was great, but it sped things up.

  Their motto came to mind: Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Bloodthirsty Corpse.

  Then I thought that it wasn’t for me. That wasn’t what I wanted. No.

  Stop it. Don’t think about those things. What if it takes them and they don’t come back?

  It can’t take them. It can only copy them.

  In my mind I saw my memories reaching from the beast above me and instantly shared with the pale masses around me. Everyone knew my business.

  The beast searched my thoughts. It looked for the most telling things. It saw me getting beaten down by Damian. It saw me making love with Minarette. It looked for me, by myself, taking matters into my own hands on lonely nights. I saw myself vomiting, and then stuck on the can with the runs. The beast wanted to humiliate me. It needed to show the pale masses I was nothing but a waste, and a waste that wanted to kill each of them. I knew what it was trying to do, just as it knew my thoughts. We were connected, a hard line from me to it through the tendrils. Then it saw my thoughts with the gun…saw me imagining shooting Damian…saw me wanting it so bad…saw me watching Mikey getting attacked and killed. Mikey.

  A vision of him came up, but it was not mine. It was theirs. He was there with them. I saw him standing in the shadows, his skin light, his hair bleached and his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. I knew it was him, despite the changes. Was it still him? Or had they sucked the life out of him and replaced what had been inside him with their connective, destructive juice? The same stuff they’d put inside of me flowed inside of him.

  “No,” I heard. “Don’t take him. Not like this. He’s not worth it.”

  Damian.

  The beast withdrew. I sensed it leave my head, and its fluid cooled inside me. Then I looked up and saw Damian. There was a mean bruise on the side of his hairless head. I hoped Minarette or someone had beaned him with a brick or something that would cause permanent brain damage.

  “What are you doing down here, snooping around?” Damian cocked his head to the side. “Were you looking for me?” He brought my gun up and around—pointed it at my face. “You thought you were going to take me out, didn’t you?” He didn’t laugh.

  Feeling crept back inside my body, and it hurt like hell. The euphoria was ebbing all too quickly. I very much wanted something to ease the pain. A beer. A shot of whiskey. A bottle of wine. Painkillers. Anything. My skin itched, but I still couldn’t move.

  Damian pulled the trigger.

  I flinched.

  Click.

  No bullet in the chamber.

  How’d he done that? It couldn’t have been that long since it’d been found and pushed from my leg, could it?

  He withdrew the gun.

  “You can’t kill me,” he screamed in my face. “You’re a really stupid motherfucker.” His voice was louder than I could say. There were many pale-faced folks from the crew surrounding us.

  I wondered where Minarette was. Maybe she was hiding somewhere. When I first met her, I thought she was a badass. But that all seemed to change. Maybe that was because the Ghost Heart was catching up with her? She’d changed from a blonde goddess, and now had pale skin and jet-black hair. She’d also lost a lot of her verve. It was weird.

  Damian nudged me. “Hey? You spacing out on me?”

  I tried to say something but my mouth wasn’t working yet.

  “You look like a fish,” he said. “With your lips moving like that. And now I have you on my hook. What am I going to do with you?”

  Then, standing behind him? A very familiar face. Uncle Dave. Thinner. Gaunt. Pale. They’d gotten him, too. Somehow. He was still alive. They all were. This all had to be a dream. It just couldn’t be real. I was so confused. I’d grieved them. Thought they were lost.

  They were.

  I was, too.

  Damian hit me with the back of his hand.

  Knocked me right out.

  That was that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My blood painted the snow. At least I thought it was my blood. Who knew? It might have been someone else’s, although that’d be a stretch because I was sure I hadn’t been able to fight back the night before after being drugged and knocked out. I stared at the red mess and wondered two things: When had it snowed? And how did I end up outside on the ground, soaking wet?

  The snow still fell and the sky was gray. It appeared to be early morning. The light had woken me. I was on my own front lawn. Everything had been covered with a dusting. It looked beautiful. The tree on my front lawn looked so striking painted white. It always had
. I remembered looking out at it as a young boy, my mother behind me, saying, “You were just climbing it last week, and look at it now. So pretty. It reminds me that Christmas is definitely coming.”

  Those words always echoed somewhere deep every time I noticed the tree, but especially right after a snowstorm. The tree still connected us, I felt.

  What mess had I gotten into?

  Hell had arrived in my hometown. I’d met it. It’d sought me out, or spotted me and followed me. I’d tried to give it hell right back, but it bounced me like a fly getting hit with a rolled-up newspaper.

  Visions floored me. The night before I’d snuck inside the Universe and found my way inside its depths. I smelled the sickly oily smell of the chipped-away hallways and its beastly source inside the massive chamber. Then I felt the tendrils inside me again, their warming fluids injecting and numbing me. The euphoria. Oh, how wonderful had that been? I’d never felt anything even close.

  Then being caught by Damian. I’d blacked out after he hit me, but a half a day later I remembered how his crew had beaten me. Not as bad as before. Just enough to rough me up again. I’d been drunk from the euphoric fluids of the beast, but semi-unconscious from their violence. They’d put me in a car; I saw fleeting memories. Then they’d dropped me on my lawn. It hadn’t been snowing at the time. That came later.

  I heard Damian’s voice as he walked away, watched his broad back, hunched and twisted like a monster.

  “Enjoy your suffering,” he’d said. “I know I am.”

  He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t ironic. He just was.

  I pulled myself up as slowly as possible. I still hurt from the time before, and feeling those familiar aches on top of the new ones emphasized that I hadn’t really recovered. The new aches weren’t as bad as the first. My face hurt. I touched it and found my nose and lips swollen.

  I slipped getting up onto my walkway, just enough to make me pause, but not enough to make me fall. I took my time getting inside.

  I had my keys and phone. My wallet was intact. They’d taken the gun, as I remembered. Stupid, I thought. I should’ve waited. Gotten the layout of the land before I’d tried that. What would I do now for protection? No one would sell me a gun, would they? There’d be a background check. It’d be tied to me. Traceable. That wouldn’t do.

  I stripped my wet clothes off and then sat on my couch. Even with the heat not having been on, my house was blessedly warm. I pulled the blankets around me and lay down, grateful it’d been all set up as my temporary bed from before. I took a few minutes to warm up and adjust. Once I did, I wrapped the blanket around my body and went to the bathroom.

  My nose and lips were puffy. They were sore when I touched them, but I was glad my nose didn’t seem broken when I wiggled it using my finger.

  I washed my face with a hot, wet rag. I then started the shower. It’d be good to warm my bones.

  The hot water was heaven. I touched the spots where the tendrils had gone inside me. They were difficult to find visually because they’d been so small. I used my touch to press and knew I’d found them when it stung. Doing so also released a bit of the fluid, a small amount still pooled where it’d been injected. Comforting numbness spread through my body once again. My aches and pains vanished. My head felt light and sleepy. The warm-and-fuzzies came back.

  I’m not sure how long I kept under the hot running water, but I was startled out of my Zen by the phone. Always the damn phone ringing.

  It was in the other room, and I did not rush to see. Taking my time leaving the shower, I dried off and slowly made my way toward the couch, wrapping myself again in my blanket.

  When I sat, I checked the phone.

  A voice message from Minarette. I played it. She said, “Rick? I want to see you.”

  I called her back right away.

  “Rick?” She answered after one ring. “I’m close. Are you okay?”

  “Been worse,” I said. Hearing her voice made my heart light.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “A little banged up,” I said. “What’s up? How are you?”

  Minarette sighed. “I’m almost at your street.” She laughed. “Well, honestly, I’ve been down here for a while hoping you’d be around. I want to see you. Maybe take you for a drive.”

  “You do this a lot.” I couldn’t hold back my own small laugh.

  Minarette said, “What can I say?”

  “How are you going to get up my street? It’s covered in black ice and snow.”

  “Good point. It is awfully steep, isn’t it?”

  “Yup,” I said. “I can walk down to the bottom.”

  “You sure?”

  “You’re never going to make it up the hill.”

  As I made my way down the snowy steps, I looked out toward the tree in my front yard. The falling snow had covered any trace I’d woken up there with a bloody face.

  Once I got to the bottom of the hill, I spotted Minarette in her car. She’d parked near the main road. She waved and I rushed over toward her, nearly taking a spill in the process.

  “Hey,” Minarette said as I opened the door. “You made it.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. Sitting down, I looked over to her. Once again, I was struck by how pale she’d become.

  She said, “Good,” and we were off on our adventure.

  “Where are we headed?” I got myself comfortable.

  “Before we go, can I ask how much time you have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A lot.”

  “I wanted to take you to my hometown in New Jersey. Northville.”

  “That’s far.”

  She said, “That’s only about forty-five minutes, if we’re lucky. It’s just over the Tappan Zee Bridge.”

  I felt nervous then. It seemed awfully personal. She turned up the radio. “Just until we’re on the road,” she said. We drove through West Avenue and made our way through the backstreets until we drove onto the on ramp of I-95.

  Minarette said, “You got pretty banged up again by Damian.”

  We finally made it onto the highway.

  “It’s seems like it’s a pattern.”

  “I’m sorry that happened. Really. I don’t like that you’re mixed up in this.”

  “Me, neither. None of this seems real at all. I mean, I swear I saw my uncle down there last night. Mikey and Jimmy, too. And there was this thing on the wall.”

  “Do you believe it?” Minarette asked. “Do you think it might have been a hallucination? You said you’ve been having a lot of those lately, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I am pretty sure this was real. I mean, I only had one or two drinks.”

  “Maybe someone dosed you or something?” she asked.

  “I would’ve known. I was paying attention. When would someone have had a chance to do that?”

  “Maybe it was the bartender?” she asked.

  “Why would they?”

  “Everyone knows who you are down at the Universe. Damian has gotten to all of them. They were just waiting for you to show up.”

  My throat felt tight. “How could they know I’d go?”

  “Of course you’d show up eventually. And not smart bringing a gun.”

  “It would’ve worked if they’d not caught me.”

  “They knew,” Minarette said. “They wanted you to go downstairs where they could disarm you without a scene.”

  “How could they know? No one searched me. There were no metal detectors.”

  “You’re dealing with beasts,” she said. “Creatures of the night. They’ve got instincts beyond what’s human. Come on. Think about it.”

  “This whole thing is just crazy.”

  “That’s why I wanted to take you away for a while. Take you out of the equation.”

  “Jeez. Well, thanks.”


  We passed several large buildings as we passed Stamford. The snow started up again, the flurries making a tunnel around us. “This always reminds me of when Han pushes the overdrive and they go into light speed,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Star Wars? You know?”

  Minarette shook her head. “Never saw it,” she said. “Guess I missed that one.”

  “Everyone’s seen Star Wars. Come on.”

  “Not me,” she said. “My childhood was a lot different than most people these days. We didn’t really…have…movies.”

  “You mean your parents didn’t let you watch movies?”

  She sighed. “Something like that.”

  The roadside changed from the towering mini-metropolis of Stamford to the woodsier climate of Greenwich.

  “It’s weird,” I said. “We really seem like we’re just meeting each other sometimes. This all seems so formal to me.”

  “Ya think?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. This is kind of like an interview. We shared a lot of great moments together recently, despite how strange everything is. I feel like there’s a real connection between us.”

  “Of course there is, silly,” she said. “Sorry if I come off a little cold at times. People have told me that many times before.”

  “No worries. I just thought I’d mention that we’d been close before.” I forced a small laugh.

  “That’s why I’m here. I care about you, Rick. And I feel just awful about what Damian did, and that he’s after you. I wanted you to know I really do care about you more than I can say. I wish there was a way I could get them to leave you alone.”

  “Me, too. I mean, let’s be real here. There were things that I saw that I can’t really place. What the hell? Are there really vampires living in Whistleville? With weird things that live on the walls?”

  “We don’t like the term vampires,” she said. “Having the Ghost Heart is something that’s a little bit different than Bram Stoker or Anne Rice imagined. We don’t have fangs. We don’t live in coffins. We don’t live forever.”