The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart

by Lauren DeStefano

  A blue light began to glow under Marybeth’s skin, dull at first, and then so bright that Lionel could see her bones. He could see her lungs breathing in and out. He could see the throbbing shadow of her heart. And beside that heart, he could see the blue creature’s heart, the source of all that light, glowing as it beat to its own fast rhythm.

  The glow became so bright that it hurt to look at, and he had to close his eyes.

  He opened them again when he heard a skittering noise against the floorboards.

  The blue glow had left Marybeth’s skin. Now, the glow came from the floor, where the blue creature was huddled on its haunches. It looked, at first, like the fox Lionel had chased through the woods all those weeks ago, but now he was finally able to get a good look at it. What he had thought to be a foxtail was instead very long hair, which wrapped around the blue creature’s huddled legs. Its eyes were big and glowing, but they were human.

  “There now,” Lionel said, and slowly slid from the couch to the floor. “Was that so hard?”

  Marybeth stirred, and a moment later, she opened her eyes. It was the emptiness that woke her. A stillness where another heart had been beating.

  The blue creature looked between Marybeth and Lionel. It was frightened, but it didn’t run.

  Cooing and mumbling soothing words, Lionel reached out. His hand went right through the blue creature, but he could feel coldness, as though he were sticking his hand out the window on a windy winter night.

  Marybeth coughed and sniffled, and crawled off the couch to kneel beside Lionel. And there the three of them remained for a while, staring at each other, trying to make sense of what they saw.

  Aside from the darting flashes of light through the woods and the reflection in the river, this was the first time Marybeth was able to get a good look at the thing that had been sharing a body with her. Despite the surreal glow, it was the same girl she had just dreamed. She was even wearing a dress.

  “Can you talk, Liza?” Marybeth asked.

  The blue creature shivered and hugged its knees.

  “I saw what happened to you,” Marybeth said. “Those boys in the woods hurt you, and then they left you in the river to drown, is that it?”

  Though she was ordinary again, and her body was her own, Marybeth did not feel the same way she had before she met the blue creature. The blue creature did not speak, but Marybeth could hear her just the same. Her mind filled with memories that belonged to Liza.

  She saw the farmhouse when its paint was fresh and new. She saw the old woman much younger, setting a plate of eggs before a man who was reading the newspaper.

  She saw Reginald, as a young boy, coming down the stairs in his pajamas.

  “They were your family, weren’t they?” Marybeth asked. “The farmhouse was where you lived.”

  Hesitantly, the blue creature nodded. The gesture made her look human.

  “He’s the one who murdered you,” Lionel said.

  The blue creature looked at him sharply, her eyes throbbing with light. She shook her head frantically.

  Lightning filled the room, and for an instant, the blue creature turned translucent in the flash.

  The blue creature looked at Marybeth. Marybeth at once felt very tired, and her head lolled back and forth, and she closed her eyes.

  She saw what the blue creature saw. The boy grabbed her arms, and she screamed. It was a human scream. A girl’s scream.

  Reginald reached for the ax, but it was too late. One of the other boys had already taken hold of it.

  Marybeth awoke with a start. Lionel was watching her face very closely. “What did you see?” he asked.

  Marybeth looked at the blue creature. “Your brother—Reginald. He tried to stop them? But he couldn’t.”

  The blue creature nodded sadly.

  “But why would they do something so awful?” Marybeth said.

  The blue creature didn’t answer. Marybeth searched her memories, but there wasn’t an explanation.

  Marybeth crawled closer to the blue creature. “Your mother doesn’t know what happened to you. She doesn’t know that you’ve been in the barn all this time. She’s been looking for you.”

  The blue creature nodded.

  “It’s taken you this long to find someone you could trust,” Lionel said. “See? I told you that we would help if you’d just be reasonable.”

  Lightning filled the room again, and once it passed, the blue creature had disappeared.

  Marybeth shivered and coughed. Lionel helped her back onto the couch and tucked the blanket under her chin.

  “She’s gone,” Marybeth said. “I still don’t understand. Why was she buried in the barn? What does she want me to do?”

  Lionel petted her hair. He could feel her fever through her scalp. “You should go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll wake you if the blue creature comes back.”

  “Liza,” Marybeth murmured, as her eyelids grew too heavy to hold up. “Her name was Liza.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  By the time the sun came up, Marybeth’s fever had gotten worse. She slept fitfully, dreaming the blue creature’s memories and muttering words that made no sense in the waking world.

  Lionel lay curled at her feet, waiting to see if the blue creature would return. She had left sometime before the clock struck midnight and hadn’t returned.

  Mrs. Mannerd paced in and out of the room with her thermometer and damp cloths, wringing her hands anxiously and then trying to place a call on the telephone over and over.

  When there was a knock at the front door, Marybeth flinched and opened her eyes. She still felt the emptiness from where the blue creature had been. The only one there to greet her was Lionel. He would never leave her, she knew.

  “Liza still hasn’t come back?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  There was a man’s voice in the other room, and Marybeth squinted at the doorway. Now that the blue creature was gone, her vision was blurry without her spectacles. Her ordinary life didn’t feel quite the same as it had just a few weeks earlier.

  “I’ll need to speak to the children who found it,” the voice said.

  “Is that truly necessary?” Mrs. Mannerd said. “They’re resting now.”

  “It’ll only be for a moment.”

  The man had boots that made a loud sound against the floorboards as he walked.

  Lionel and Marybeth sat up straight as the man entered the room. He was dressed in a policeman’s uniform.

  “Which one of you found the skeleton?”

  “We both did,” Marybeth said. She was sniffling and dabbing her nose with a handkerchief, but it was best for her to do the talking. She was better at sounding normal than Lionel was. “We know we aren’t supposed to play out there, but we couldn’t help it. None of the older kids could find us there, and we wanted them to leave us alone.”

  There was something about Marybeth’s helpless state that caused the policeman to soften. “Have you told anyone else about what you found?”

  “Only Mrs. Mannerd,” she said. “We’re sorry. We won’t go out there again.”

  The policeman cleared his throat. “That’s quite all right. It’ll all be taken care of now.”

  After the policeman was gone, Marybeth sank against the couch and closed her eyes.

  Lionel hovered anxiously over her. “Is it really gone?” he asked.

  “I think so. I can’t feel anything.”

  When she began to fall asleep, he sat on the floor beside her.

  He took her hand, and she smiled with her eyes closed.

  The doctor came by in the late morning and shooed Lionel from the room, telling him that Marybeth was too contagious for him to be exposed. But Lionel wouldn’t get sick. He knew he wouldn’t. Years of hiding outdoors and sleeping under a drafty roof had gotten him used to the cold.

  Once the doctor had gone, Lionel returned to the living room to resume his vigil.

  Even pale and tired, Marybeth was fie
rce. Unafraid. When she opened her eyes, they were filled with determination. After weeks of being subject to the blue creature’s whims, she finally had her own skin to herself and she wanted to be awake for it.

  “You’ve done such a good job being human all these weeks,” she said hoarsely. “I’ve enjoyed it.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” he said.

  “Lionel.” She rolled onto her side to look at him. “Is it so awful being human?”

  He sat on the floor, tugging at a loose thread in her blanket. “There are better things to be.”

  She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him. “Why?” she said. “Why would you rather be a gosling, or a bear, or a squirrel than a boy?”

  He bristled. No one had ever asked him such a thing. The closest anyone came was when Mrs. Mannerd put her hands on her hips and said, “Why can’t you sit at the table with the rest of us?” or “Why must you test me today of all days?”

  That last one was her favorite, and she said it a lot.

  But Marybeth was looking at him with sincere curiosity, and it frightened him.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said. “It isn’t important.”

  “Did someone hurt you?” she went on with graceful persistence. “The way someone hurt Liza.”

  Lionel pulled his knees against his chest and tried to look away, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t hide from Marybeth the way that he hid from everyone else.

  “I’m not a real orphan,” he confessed. “My mother is dead, but my father isn’t. He’s in jail. But he isn’t coming out, so it’s like he’s dead.”

  Marybeth slid off the couch and sat on the floor beside him. She brought the blanket with her, and fitted it around the both of them.

  She was so close that he could feel the warmth of her fever. She said, “Why is he in jail?”

  The question was more than a question. It was a fast journey down a winding road, to a place Lionel didn’t want to visit again. Not ever again.

  “He was never all the way awake,” Lionel said. “He drank all day. I used to think that the stuff in those bottles was his blood, and he needed it to live. I used to see the liquid shining in the bottles and hope it would be enough for him to see tomorrow.”

  Marybeth listened.

  “My mother—all I remember is that she wore a green dress and her hair was short, and she was always mad at him. That’s it. That’s all I remember. She always had a green dress on. That’s the way she died.”

  Marybeth’s voice was soft. “What happened to her?”

  Lionel had never felt so painfully human. He wanted to grow wings. He wanted the wings to tear through his skin and fluff out, bloody and full and strong, and carry him away.

  “It turns out that it wasn’t blood in the bottles,” he said. “It was poison. The worst kind of poison there is. It made him see things. Think things. It made him mean.”

  He shivered, and Marybeth took his hands. “Lionel,” she whispered.

  She understood. That was her gift, Lionel thought; she didn’t need to see horrible things to understand that they existed. Compassion was just a part of her way. She wasn’t going to ask him to tell the rest of the story, but now he had to. If he didn’t, it would stay trapped in his throat, forever waiting to be spoken.

  “He killed her,” Lionel said. “They fought until he had her down on the floor and he put his hands around her neck. I couldn’t make him stop. I didn’t have any claws. I didn’t have any fangs. All I could do was hide.”

  “Shh,” Marybeth said, because she heard the tremor in his voice before he did. She put her arms around him, and he could feel her heart beating against his own chest.

  It was no wonder the blue creature had hidden within her. She was a fortress. She was the only safe place in a world of frightening strangers.

  “Shh,” she said again, and rocked him. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

  He was grateful that he was human, if only for a moment, if only for now.

  Two weeks went by, and Marybeth began to feel better. In truth she didn’t mind being in quarantine. Mrs. Mannerd brought her tea and toast with jam, and the older ones were afraid to get close to her.

  The hollow feeling under her skin began to lessen, as though her organs were settling back into place, making her something normal again.

  During her evening bath, she soaked in the warm water and tried to conjure up a memory of the blue creature being pushed into the river. But it was gone.

  “Liza? If you’re frightened, you can still come to me for help,” she said. And after thinking about it, she added, “Just stay on the outside this time.”

  There was no answer, and she worried for the blue creature, frightened and alone somewhere. She worried about what would happen to its bones.

  Lionel kept close to her and asked if there were any signs of it. Every time, the answer was no.

  As Marybeth grew healthier, Lionel asked about the blue creature less and less. Mrs. Mannerd had also stopped giving Marybeth her worried glances. Life began to return to normal, and with each passing day, it came to be as though the blue creature had never happened.

  For everyone but Marybeth, that is. Though the hollow feeling inside her chest was mostly gone, a bit of it never healed up completely, and she got a sense that there was something that needed to be finished.

  The day that Marybeth finally stopped sneezing, she began to sense that Liza was nearby. It was as though her ghost had been waiting for her to be strong enough to hear her.

  It was as the older ones were rushing downstairs for breakfast. Marybeth lingered on the top step with her hand on the bannister. She didn’t move. She waited for the older ones to pass her and for it to be quiet enough to listen.

  “Liza?” Marybeth’s voice was barely a whisper.

  She didn’t see Liza, nor did she feel her under her skin. But a thought had been planted in her mind. She had to speak to Reginald. There was something more to do.

  “Marybeth?” Mrs. Mannerd was staring up at her. “You need to eat your breakfast and keep up your strength. We don’t want a relapse.”

  Marybeth looked around her. Liza was nowhere, and still the thought of Liza’s brother persisted.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mannerd,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Liza’s funeral was on a day made gray and white by winter.

  There was no one to attend, except for Liza’s mother and Reginald, and the man who read from the Bible, and the gravedigger who removed his hat and leaned on his shovel.

  Marybeth and Lionel didn’t approach. They stood by the entrance and watched. From here, death was not so immediate. None of the gravestones seemed to have names, and the ground was soft and white.

  The hollow in Marybeth’s chest was more noticeable today. She watched the funeral and felt horribly sad. Little girls shouldn’t have funerals at all, but if they did, they should be filled with people who had loved her.

  There should have been more than just bones to bury.

  Lionel grabbed her hand, and his touch reminded her that there were still living things in the world. It wasn’t all ghosts and muttered prayers.

  The man closed the Bible and the old woman started crying. That was it. There were no more words to be said.

  Marybeth hesitated, then she let go of Lionel’s hand. “I’m going to talk to Reginald.”

  “Are you sure?” Lionel said. For him, the wild blue creature had been tamed. She was where she belonged, and she hadn’t come back.

  But Marybeth knew that the emptiness wouldn’t go away until she knew everything that Liza had wanted to tell her.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “Wait here.”

  She stepped into the cemetery, but she didn’t have to go much farther. Reginald had seen her, and he met her by the entrance.

  He was a tall man, with a face as sullen and gray as the clouds that loomed overhead. But Liza had shown Marybeth how he once looked as a boy. As she still remembered hi
m even now.

  “Does your family know you’re out here?” he said. “They must be missing you.”

  With that, Marybeth realized that she knew more about Reginald than he knew about her. She had seen the most horrible moment of his entire life, played out before her like a dream. But to him, she was just a peculiar child who kept sneaking into his barn.

  “We were just walking to the library,” she said. This was the truth, but not all of it. Nobody had told Marybeth that Liza would be buried today, but she had sensed it and knew that she needed to come. “And we—I, I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Reginald smiled, but it was a distracted, sad smile. He looked over his shoulder at his mother weeping by the open grave, and then he looked at Marybeth. “Did you see my sister?” he asked. “I’ve always thought she haunted the woods, but I never saw her. Sometimes I thought I was crazy.”

  “Yes,” Marybeth said. “She told me that you tried to protect her. I think she was tired of being a ghost and she wanted to rest.”

  Reginald ran his hand through his hair. For a moment he looked just like a young boy.

  “Why was she buried in the barn?” Marybeth asked. If Mrs. Mannerd were here, she’d scold her for asking such a forward question. But the blue creature had made her brave.

  But Reginald wasn’t bothered by the question. “You remind me of her,” he said. “Fearless.”

  A few weeks ago, nobody would have described Marybeth as bold. She had been cautious and polite. But she was learning now that she had more bravery than she knew.

  “Liza was our mother’s favorite,” Reginald said. “Liza made her happier than anything in the world. Even when we were kids, I could see that. Our father saw it, too. So we protected her as best we could. But—you’re young yet, but one day you’ll learn that sometimes things happen.”

  Marybeth already knew this, but she let him go on.

  “Liza had drowned by the time I was able to pull her out of the water. I tried, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”

  Marybeth felt the hollowness throbbing in her chest, filling with sorrow.

  “Burying her in the barn was our father’s idea,” Reginald said. “He said it would be easier on my mother if she didn’t know what happened. If she thought Liza had run off or been kidnapped—anything would be better than the truth.”