The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart

by Lauren DeStefano

  “Are the restraints really necessary?” Mrs. Mannerd said. Her own voice felt miles away. She thought that she might faint.

  “Our methods may seem unnerving at first, but I assure you, they yield results,” Delores said. “When our children behave hysterically, this is where they end up. Most get wiser and are never brought here again.”

  Mrs. Mannerd took a shaky step forward. “Marybeth?”

  Marybeth looked at her, and to any stranger, the look on her face might have been taken for anger. But Mrs. Mannerd knew her, and knew that it was something else. This was not the sweet child she had cared for all these years. Mrs. Mannerd could not shake the feeling that this was not Marybeth at all.

  She was still wearing her new gloves. Her fingers wriggled helplessly in their restraints, but she had stopped truly fighting.

  Mrs. Mannerd knelt by the bed. She tried to pet Marybeth’s hair, but a low growl stopped her, and she withdrew her hand.

  “This isn’t forever,” she said. “I’ll come and visit. And once you’re better, I’ll take you back home for good. Do you understand? This isn’t permanent.”

  Marybeth’s lips parted, and it looked as though she wanted to say something. There was a moment of recognition in her eyes.

  But all that came out of her was a growl and then a whimper, like a fox that had its leg caught in a trap.

  During the long drive back to the little red house, the hatbox sat in the seat where Marybeth had been just an hour before, and Mrs. Mannerd could not remember the last time that she had been so sad.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The shovel hit something hard, and at last Lionel allowed himself to stop digging. Despite the cold air, his face was sweating and his shoulders felt like they were on fire.

  The hole he dug went past his waist now, and he knelt in the loosened dirt and began to brush it away.

  There was something buried here, and now he could sense it, the way animals sensed rain. He dug through clumps of dirt, pebbles, and frail broken roots.

  His fingers touched the hard thing that he’d first struck with the shovel. But when he brushed more of the dirt away, the first thing he saw was the color yellow.

  At least, he thought it must have once been yellow. The fabric was filthy and so faded that he could almost see right through it.

  In his confusion, he wondered if the blue creature had buried it here. That it might have been an old doll from the little red house that hadn’t been played with since Marybeth lost her interest in toys.

  But the more dirt he cleared away, the longer the yellow fabric proved to be, until it was much too long for a doll, but just the right size for a real human girl.

  He reached the hem of the fabric, scalloped with dirty white lace, and a small black shoe with a leather bow.

  His heart was beating so loud by then that he felt it in his ears. Attached to the shoe was a solid white bone. The yellow dress was filled with bones as well.

  Lionel stopped. He closed his eyes and tried, tried, tried to think of what the foxes or the birds would do. He tried to be any animal that came to his mind. An elephant or a tiger or the sparrows like the ones on the kitchen curtains.

  But his mind would not let him. He was human, only human, and he couldn’t stand it.

  He sat on the ground for a very long time before he had the courage to clear away more of the dirt. All his animal instincts had abandoned him by then, and he saw through his human eyes.

  There were legs, ribs, arms, fingers, lying fragile in the dirt, like a puzzle that would come apart if he disturbed the pieces.

  And then, right where it should be, there was a skull. All together, the pieces made up a girl, about the same size as Lionel. Or, he thought, the same size as Marybeth.

  “It’s you,” he said to the empty spaces where its eyes should be. This was why the blue creature had run away when they stepped into the graveyard. This was why it kept leading Marybeth back to this barn in the middle of the night. It was trying to find its body, and it knew it would be here.

  The blue creature had been human all along.

  “I’ll come back,” Lionel said. He began to lay the dirt back in place, so that nobody else would uncover what he’d found. “I won’t leave you here forever. I promise.” But he knew there was no one to hear him. He was only talking to bones and cloth. The blue creature was not here. It was with Marybeth, who had been taken away. He would have to find her and bring her here.

  Lionel arrived at the little red house just seconds before Mrs. Mannerd. She saw him darting out from between the shrubs. He saw her, too, and realized that he’d been caught. But worse, he saw that the passenger seat was empty.

  Mrs. Mannerd got out of the car. She looked tired, and Lionel could sense her sadness even from several yards away. “Oh, Lionel, what have you been up to now?” she said, exasperated.

  “Where’s Marybeth?” he said.

  “Lionel—”

  “You said you wouldn’t leave her. You said you wouldn’t!”

  He ran for the road, but this one time Mrs. Mannerd was faster than he was. She had lost a child today, and she wasn’t about to lose another. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

  “Lionel, listen to me.” She knelt to his level and gripped his shoulders. “Marybeth is sick. She’s very sick. She’s going to get what she needs there.”

  Lionel squirmed angrily but could not free himself from her grasp. “She needs me,” he said. “I can help her.”

  “You’re only a little boy,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “I know you children have your fun pretending, but you are a child and so is she, and you’ll understand one day that this is for the better.”

  Lionel was so frustrated that he screamed.

  It was a sound that Mrs. Mannerd hated especially, and Lionel knew it. But this time, Mrs. Mannerd did not cover her ears or tell him to stop. She kept hold of his arm and she marched right into the house, past the poor tutor who had been nervously searching for Lionel all morning.

  Lionel was still screaming when Mrs. Mannerd dragged him up the stairs and into her bedroom, which was strictly off-limits. This got Lionel to stop screaming. He had never seen what was on the other side of this door. None of the children had.

  It smelled faintly of laundered clothes and talcum powder. Lionel didn’t get a chance to look around the room before Mrs. Mannerd had opened the closet door and pushed him inside.

  Stunned, he tried the knob, but it was jammed. He pounded on the door, kicked it, but it was solid wood and it hardly even rattled.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “I can’t have you running after her. You’ll only get yourself lost, or worse.”

  Lionel rattled the doorknob and screamed. He made his hands like claws and tried to dig his way through the wood, even after the silence on the other side told him that Mrs. Mannerd had gone.

  Downstairs, Mrs. Mannerd took the flour from the pantry and rummaged through the box of recipes she kept in a shoe box by the stove. Her hands were shaking, and the only thing that had ever settled her nerves was to cook. Anything would do.

  But she could hear Lionel stomping around upstairs, and it was impossible to concentrate on the recipes.

  Despite the racket Lionel made, she was not thinking about Lionel as much as she was thinking about Marybeth.

  She turned on the oven.

  By midafternoon, the older children had returned from school, and the house was filled with their noise. From the kitchen, Mrs. Mannerd could hear their silly chatter and their meaningless arguments. They did not even notice that Lionel and Marybeth were gone.

  Upstairs in the closet, Lionel had curled up on the floor and was staring at the crack of light that came through from under the door.

  He thought about the skeleton in the yellow dress, and what Marybeth said about the lost souls wandering on Halloween. He thought back to the way the blue creature had been able to put on Marybeth’s boots and button her coat, and how it knew the way to
the farmhouse.

  The blue creature, when it was alive, had been a human girl. Just like Marybeth.

  Lionel had hours to imagine what sorts of horrible things had happened to the blue creature that led to her body being buried in that shed. He thought of how frightened the blue creature was of strangers, the way it ran away and cried out when someone got too close to Marybeth. The way it attacked the older one that took Marybeth’s food.

  The blue creature had been murdered. There was no question about that. Maybe, Lionel thought, he could free Marybeth and together they could bring the blue creature back to her body.

  He wasn’t sure how to get out of this closet, much less how to save Marybeth. But one thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t tell Mrs. Mannerd the truth. Even after seeing what the blue creature had done to Marybeth, she believed that Marybeth was sick. She would never believe the truth. And even if he showed Mrs. Mannerd the skeleton in the barn, she would call the police. The police would take the bones and the yellow dress away, and then the blue creature would never find its way back and Marybeth would be haunted forever.

  Lionel stayed very silent. Maybe Mrs. Mannerd would open the door if she thought he was dead. And maybe, if he could mimic the blue creature, she would take him to the same place she’d taken Marybeth.

  Late that evening, the older children sat down for supper, and Mrs. Mannerd prepared a plate to take to Lionel. She included a slice of raspberry pie, which she knew he loved and would probably eat even if he was mad at her. But just as she was about to walk upstairs, the telephone rang.

  This caused the older children to stop their chatter. The phone never rang unless something big was about to happen, like a storm, or the arrival of a new orphan with nowhere left to go.

  The ringing made Mrs. Mannerd very nervous, but she didn’t let it show. She set Lionel’s plate on the staircase, and she picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?”

  CHAPTER

  17

  The closet door was yanked open, waking Lionel from his fitful dreams of empty dresses buried in shallow graves. Mrs. Mannerd was standing over him, holding his coat and boots. “Get dressed,” she said, and the urgency in her voice made Lionel forget that he was angry with her. “We’re going to get Marybeth.”

  Lionel was dressed and in the car before Mrs. Mannerd had even finished buttoning her coat.

  The sky was dark now, and thunder rumbled in the distance. Mrs. Mannerd ran from the house, not bothering with the scarf she wore on her head when it rained. She must have been very worried.

  She started the car and backed down the driveway faster than Lionel thought the car had been able to go. Just as they turned onto the road, it started to rain.

  Finally, Lionel said, “Marybeth is in trouble, isn’t she?”

  “She’s gone missing,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “I don’t understand how. She was tied to the bed, and they said that she chewed through the restraints and somehow broke through the window.”

  The word “restraints” hit Lionel like a punch. How could Mrs. Mannerd let them put Marybeth in restraints?

  He swallowed down his argument. If he didn’t behave, she might not allow him to come along. Politeness had become such a habit in recent weeks that he didn’t have to work very hard to speak rationally. He said, “Why are you letting me come with you?”

  “Because she listens to you.” Mrs. Mannerd shook her head. “I don’t understand it, but you’re the only one in the world who can talk to her these days.”

  The rain sounded like hands on the roof of the car banging to be let in. A flash of lightning illuminated the road before them.

  Mrs. Mannerd muttered prayers. Lionel thought of Marybeth and the frightened blue creature out in the cold rain.

  The drive was very long, even though Mrs. Mannerd drove faster than the car was meant to go. Near the end of the drive, Lionel was beginning to contemplate prayers himself.

  The car turned onto the bumpy dark road that was lined with trees. Lionel’s stomach lurched, not because of the turbulence, but because this scary road was one that Marybeth had taken.

  There was nothing but blackness.

  Lionel first saw the building when it was illuminated by a flash of lightning. He shrank back in his seat. No wonder the blue creature had run away.

  Mrs. Mannerd stopped the car, but she didn’t open her door right away. She gripped the steering wheel and took a deep breath. “Lionel,” she said, “I want you to do what you have to do.” She looked at him. “If you can find her, do what you have to do. You won’t be in trouble.”

  Lionel nodded. They opened their doors and stepped out into the rain.

  Lionel did not like the building at all. It smelled like open wounds, and the hallways were windowless cages.

  The nurses were frantic and as white as their uniforms. They led Mrs. Mannerd and Lionel to the room where Marybeth had been.

  Even for the blue creature, the sight was odd. There were leather straps at each corner of the bed, stretched and worn until they were big enough to escape from. The window was small and very high on the wall. The glass was smashed and framed by bloody shards. The wind howled through the opening.

  “What in the world,” Mrs. Mannerd gasped.

  “I have seen a great many things,” one of the nurses said, “but this—this isn’t human.”

  “Yes it is,” Lionel said.

  When he spoke, it was the first time the nurses could bother to notice him. But they didn’t get more than a glimpse, because in the next instant he had taken off running for the door.

  It was a black moonless night, and once he had stepped outside, Lionel had little sense of where he was. The light from the building’s window was faint.

  He ran to the building’s side first, to see where Marybeth would have escaped from her window.

  There was a tree whose branches scraped against the brick. She must have climbed down from there, Lionel thought.

  He was overwhelmed by the infiniteness of the woods and overpowered by the rain and cold, but he didn’t care. He would search for her as long as it took. All night, if he had to.

  And then he saw it. A flash of blue.

  It darted through the trees.

  “Wait!” Lionel called. His voice was taken by the wind. He ran through the trees, tripping on brambles and roots. “Wait! Marybeth, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

  The blue light hesitated and froze in place, giving Lionel enough time for a closer look.

  He was frightened by what he saw. There in the darkness, with one hand pressed against the trunk of a large tree, was Marybeth, glowing like a ghost. She was barefoot and wearing a torn white gown that was no defense against this weather. Blood stained her sleeve and her knees.

  She was looking at him, with eyes as blue as the rest of her. And Lionel understood that this was not Marybeth. This was the elusive creature he had tracked for days to no avail, thinking it was a fox.

  The creature stared at him a moment longer, and Lionel thought he saw recognition in its eyes. But then it was gone again, running into the darkness.

  Lionel ran after it. He couldn’t predict what the creature was capable of, nor did he understand how it was able to move so quickly. But he knew Marybeth. He knew that she was only human, and that the blue creature would run until Marybeth’s body was spent and she died out here in this cold.

  “Marybeth,” he called.

  Lightning flashed.

  “Marybeth!”

  At last he stopped to catch his breath. He’d lost all sense of where he was now. The building and its lights were no longer visible, nor was that eerie blue light.

  The sound of the rain concealed the sound of Marybeth’s footsteps, and he did not know where the blue creature had taken her.

  He found a tree with enough footholds for him to climb, and he made his way to the top, clinging to the slick bark. Lightning flashed again, and the world went dark again when it was gone.

  “Marybeth!” h
e called again, when he had climbed as high as the tree would allow. He searched for any trace of blue light, but there was nothing.

  As he climbed back down, he began to realize that the water on his cheeks was not entirely from the rain.

  Don’t cry, he told himself.

  Lions didn’t cry.

  Birds didn’t cry.

  Coyotes and tigers and mice didn’t cry.

  But try as he might, he could not run like a lion and cover the breadth of the woods. He could not fly above the trees and look down and find Marybeth. He had lost her, the way that only a silly, powerless human could lose something so important.

  He began to shiver from the cold. He wouldn’t go back without her. He would search until he could no longer stand. If she was lost, then he would be lost, too.

  Just as he moved to take another futile step, there was a sound behind him.

  He spun, and there was Marybeth, on her hands and knees in the mud, poised as though to attack. He could see her fighting behind those eerily glowing eyes. Her fingers were clawing into the ground. Her face twitched as she tried to speak.

  She was the one who found her way to him, he realized. The blue creature was whimpering and thrashing its head, trying to resist.

  He stayed where he was, with two yards of distance between them.

  “It’s okay,” Lionel said, and held up his hands. “It’s me. You remember me. I won’t hurt you.”

  He could see the blue creature’s conflict. It was frightened, but cold. It didn’t want to stay out here, but it wouldn’t go back into that awful building.

  “You don’t have to go back inside,” Lionel said. He was shivering, but he kept his voice steady. “I won’t let them leave you here. We can go back home. But you have to let Marybeth out.”

  The blue creature nursed its wounded hand.

  Lionel took a cautious step closer, then another. The blue creature watched him.

  Finally, he was close enough to see Marybeth’s face clearly.

  “I understand,” Lionel told the blue creature. “I know why you kept running back to the barn. I know that someone killed you.”