by Dia Reeves
Heartsick
Dia Reeves
Heartsick Copyright © 2018 by Dia Reeves. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
“Are you the one giving out jobs?” Rue said when the front door opened, a gust of arctic wind throwing it wide.
A servant in a uniform—a black dress with a white collar and cuffs—caught the door as it rebounded, a woman as craggy and tall as Mt. Everest. And possibly as old. She squinted at Rue, viewing her from an ancient and lofty height. “The lethiferist job?” She spoke the way eagles screamed.
Rue hunched her shoulders against another blast of wind. “Yes, ma’am.”
“A little thing like you?”
“Very little. Like E. coli.”
“I doubt you even know what a lethiferist is,” said the servant, closing the door.
“The bringer of death.” Rue spoke quickly, bouncing in place, and not just because she was freezing. “An exterminator of supernatural vermin, and I’ll bet there’s all sorts of vermin skittering around a house like this one.” She tried peering around the servant’s body. “Is it haunted? It looks terribly haunted.”
The door swung wide again. “This house is an East Texas historic landmark, an antebellum plantation home that belonged to one of Portero’s founding fathers and has been featured in several prestigious architectural publications.” The servant propped a hand on one fossilized hip. “It ain’t full of vermin. Not supernatural, not otherwise.”
“It must be or you wouldn’t need me.”
After an eon, the servant shifted a bit, lost a fraction of her natural rigidity. “I said it ain’t full of vermin. Could be there’s a few. Here and there. Could be we need help.”
“I like to help. Can I have the job?”
“The mister does the hiring around here, not me. And where’re your folks, anyhow?”
“At home.”
“You don’t think they’re wondering where you are? Late as it is?”
“I doubt it,” Rue said, the wind digging icy fingers into the back of her neck. “They threw me out.”
“In the middle of the night? Without a coat?”
“My mom claimed my coat. It’s better than hers; the pockets are lined with fur. They burned all my other stuff.” Rue sneezed.
The servant shifted again. Crumbled just a little.
“Come on out of that wind at least. I’ll fix you some warm milk and cookies, take some of the chill outta your bones. But it ain’t up to me what happens after that!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rue stepped into a huge entrance way. Candlelight gleamed gold on the silk-papered walls, the domed ceiling, the elaborate staircase. Candlelight everywhere—islands of light in an ocean of gloom.
“Why’s it so dark in here?” Rue asked as the servant guided her to the left.
“All this devil wind knocked the power lines down.”
“Is the power allowed to go out in such a grand estate?”
“The mister loves antiques, and ain’t nothing more antique than the electrical system in this house. You learn quick to work hard and stay busy. The minute you stop working, you freeze to death.”
The kitchen wasn’t one of those homey places, like in the movies, with pots of flowers on the window sill and some lady baking a pie. It was steely and industrial and full of appliances complicated enough to launch rockets into outer space.
The servant settled Rue onto a stool by the counter, and then bustled about, setting a flame to the stove, unscrewing a glass jar full of soft dark cookies, fetching milk from the fridge. “Before it goes off,” she muttered.
“My name’s Rue. What’s yours?”
“Shirley.”
“Shirley, what do you think of my outfit?”
Shirley looked at the pinstriped shirt and skirt combo, and then looked quickly away.
“I saw it in a magazine,” said Rue defensively. “A glossy magazine. What to wear to a job interview.”
“This ain’t that kind of job. You should have put on some chainmail or strapped a pair of guns to your hips.” She sat a glass of milk and a plate of cookies before Rue. “You look like a kid wearing mommy’s work clothes.”
“The lady at the store gave me this stuff. Not my mom. You think I’ll be fired?”
“Can’t be fired from a job you ain’t got. You’ll have to make the best of it. If the mister decides he don’t want you as a lethiferist, maybe he’ll want you as a servant. We could always use a new servant. Now drink your milk.”
Rue tapped her fingers against the glass, watched the ivory liquid shiver. In fear?
“How old are you anyway?” Shirley asked.
“Thirty-five?”
“See my shoes? They’re thirty-five. You? Not even close.”
Rue redid the math. “Eighteen? Or seventeen? Something like that.”
“How can you not know how old you are?”
“We don’t keep track the way humans do.”
“Humans?” The eagle’s shriek was more piercing than ever. “I knew there was something about you. Something in the eyes. You can always tell by the eyes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Before Shirley could speak again, another servant bounded down the kitchen staircase, his black pants ripped, white collar and cuffs stained with blood. Blood also stained the homespun sack draped over his shoulder. In his wake trailed a much younger, bespectacled servant carrying a huge tray of dishes.
“Good Lord, Allan,” Shirley exclaimed. “You look like two miles of rough road.”
“I can believe it after what I went through. Went into the utility closet and nearly broke my back from slipping on all the blood. And while I’m on the floor, I catch sight of this thing behind the water heater.” He shook the bag, eliciting a series of frightened squawks from the tiny lump within.
“What’s in there?” Rue asked.
“Imp. AKA unholy spawn.” He turned to Shirley. “Who’s this?”
“She came about the lethiferist job.”
“That’s great!” The bespectacled servant admired Rue from the sink. “I know I’d feel safer with a lethiferist in the house.”
“Frida, run up and tell the mister that Rue...what’s your last name?”
“Just Rue.”
“Tell him Just Rue,” Shirley said, the grit back in her tone, “is here to see him.”
“Grissel sent me down to clean the windows in the music room.”
“The stained glass? Not on your life. I’ll do it.”
Frida paused at the counter and nabbed one of Rue’s cookies. “Are you sure you want the job?” She had pitched her voice lower, as though sharing secrets. “It’s dangerous here on a good day, but on a bad day—”
“Frida, go ahead on like I told you!”
After a final hopeful look at Rue, Frida raced up the kitchen stairs.
While Shirley filled a bucket with soap and water, she said, “Allan, clean up the blood in the utility closet. Rue, you wait here and finish your snack. The mister’ll know what to do with you.”
“Throw you back in the pond with the other small fry,” Allan said when Shirley left with her cleaning supplies. He had been staring at Rue in disbelief ever since he’d found out she was applying for the job. He had a blustery, macho lacquer that Ru
e was sure would peel off under the right circumstances. Because Shirley was right—the eyes gave everything away—and Allan couldn’t hold her gaze for even a second.
As he opened a cleverly concealed closet full of cleaning tools, Rue slipped beside him and unbuttoned the middle button of her blouse. A thin, grayish filament shot forth from her shirt and jabbed Allan’s hand just as it closed around a mop.
He recoiled. Dropped the twitching bag. Froze. Stared blankly into the distance.
Rue unbuttoned his shirt, just enough, and let the whippy filament abandon his hand for the juicier prize deep within his chest. The filament was stretched whisper-thin because Allan was so much taller than Rue, their chests at different levels, but the transaction was quick. After sixty seconds or so, Rue was back on the stool. Not that she wanted to be sitting. Now that she was recharged—and warm; so very nice to be warm again—she wanted to explore.
Allan, on the other hand, looked ready for a sick bed.
“What just happened?” He clutched his heart, his shirt still slightly unbuttoned though he didn’t seem to notice. He ducked behind the counter, suddenly, as though someone had thrown a rock at him. He peeped at Rue. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Am I okay?” He wiped his sweaty face with a handkerchief. “Something’s not right.”
The filament Rue’d jabbed Allan with had, in addition to releasing an anesthetic into his body, scrambled his short-term memory. Caused a tiny bit of paranoia too. Over the years, Rue had found it best to give prey a reason they could believe in, a reason that would deescalate their panic.
“The imp has made you suspicious.” Rue fanned herself with her hand as her temperature spiked, typical after a top up. “Suspicious and fearful. I don’t know why; he’s a cupcake.”
“What’re you doing in that bag?”
“Relax. I’m not going to hurt him.”
“Hurt what? It’s an imp!”
“He’s hungry.”
“For your soul!”
“He’s eating cookies and milk, not my soul.” She gestured to the empty plate and glass. “Can he have some more?”
“What you do with imps, lethiferist, is you take ’em to the nearest lake and drown ’em. What you don’t do is feed ’em snacks!”
“Going down to the lake is unnecessary; I could beat Mr. Imp to death with my pinky. Not that I would. And the food would have just gone to waste. Mr. Imp is being helpful.”
“You know what I think would be helpful? Hiring a lethiferist who ain’t a cupcake. You’re the cupcake—not that demon spawn!”
Rue’s bottom lip trembled. “Do you really think I’m a cupcake, Allan?”
“Jesus, kid.” Even though his tough guy façade had forsaken him, Allan stopped cowering long enough to snatch a few paper towels from the dispenser and hand them to Rue. “Don’t wipe on your sleeve. Were you born in a barn?”
“No.” She swiped at her dry nose and sighed pathetically. “But there was a woodshed nearby. If I don’t get this job, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You’ll be all right.” Allan patted her on the head. “But you gotta be smart. And letting imps crawl in your ear ain’t smart!”
Rue giggled as the imp gripped her earlobe.
“Mr. Imp isn’t doing anything wrong. He’s whispering secrets. About…James? Is James the one who left the blood in the utility closet?”
Allan looked her in the eye this time. Didn’t flinch. “How do you know James?”
“I don’t know him; Mr. Imp does.”
“That thing was in James?”
“James was his host. A good host. Most humans can’t tolerate imps. They start acting weird and drawing attention to themselves; attention is dangerous for imps. But James always behaved like himself, so Mr. Imp rewarded him with…hard bones and less sick? He strengthened James’s immune system. But none of that saved James from the monster.”
“What monster?”
Rue listened. Did her best to translate. “The monster in the music room. Tried to eat James. But couldn’t because Mr. Imp had made his bones too hard. Too hard to crunch and munch.”
Allan dashed from the kitchen.
“Wait! That’s my job.” Her words echoed in the empty kitchen. “Or it will be. If I’m lucky. Too bad no one’s come for me.”
Rue told Mr. Imp, “I saw a job opening at Smiley’s, but it doesn’t even pay minimum wage. Lethiferists make tons of money. Bags and bags of it. If I had money, I could take my sister far away and show her the life she’s missing. I could do it with no money, but people aren’t as nice when you’re broke, and to convince Nettle, everything needs to be really nice. No she’s not comfy and warm to live in. Neither am I. There’s already someone inside of me and she would eat you for breakfast. No, you don’t know her.” She scooped Mr. Imp into her palm. “You’re too big to be living inside of people anyway. You have to strike out on your own like I did. Oh it’s safe enough, but no one’s ever truly safe.”
A yell, quickly aborted, followed by the ugly/pretty smash of glass, brought Rue to her feet.
“See? There’s danger everywhere. What kind of monster did you say it was? Lots of arms and spit? Doesn’t ring a bell. We should investigate.”
Mr. Imp hid inside Rue’s fancy work shirt.
“Coward.”
She left the kitchen and retraced her steps back to the huge foyer.
“I know I don’t have to. But if I only did what I had to, I’d never have any fun.”
As she approached the grand staircase—a beautiful contrast to the utilitarian kitchen stairs—the electricity flickered to life, bathing Rue in a pale light barely brighter than the galaxy of candle flames. The walls were full of portraits Rue hadn’t noticed before in the gloom, a gallery of photo portraits, all of the same woman. In every pose she was smiling or laughing, fantastically happy, her sea-blue eyes curiously luminous.
“Which way Mr. Imp?”
Mr. Imp peeked from the gap between her shirt buttons and guided her down a hall to the right of the stairs and through a pair of glass-paneled doors.
The huge room, decorated with shiny gold pillars and matching drapes over windows that encompassed two stories, seemed to serve no purpose. Empty, except for a lump near a door that had been left ajar.
On closer inspection, Rue realized the lump was a man.
He lay face up near the wall behind one of the gold pillars, almost unidentifiable because he had achieved an extreme form of nudity. Both his clothes and skin were gone, the yellowed arc of his rib cage exposed to the open air, heart trapped inside.
Rue knelt near the body, awed. His skin had dissolved; his heart was still sizzling, eating itself out. Rue had lived in Portero her whole life and had met any number of arcane personalities, but she’d never met anyone who could melt flesh down to the bone.
“Is this James?”
Mr. Imp nodded sadly.
“But you said he was in the music room. Is this—”
Noises from the room beyond. The distinctive grind and crackle of bone splintering. The door slammed shut as she watched. Spattered in blood and something clear and viscous. Slime? Slime that could eat through paint and wood?
Rue commandeered one of the heavy, silken drapes from the wall and covered the skinless man with it. And after the noise moved away from the door, Rue kicked it open.
A rug lay in a heap on one side of the room, near a stringless harp. A white piano as big as a car stood on a raised platform at the back of the room. Folding chairs leaned erratically against the walls. A frigid wind blew through the shattered window, shattered because of the dead servant slumped over the sill. Her blood pooled on the floor and mixed with the soapy water that had spilled from an overturned bucket.
Shirley. So imposing in life, but quite the opposite in death, her bones probably more brittle than the glass she had tried to jump through.
Or been shoved through.
Beyond the window stretched the d
ark outline of the East Texas Piney Woods. Night-blooming jasmine from a garden Rue couldn’t see perfumed the air, much nicer than the smell of blood and death in the music room. Blood, death, and a faint animal stink.
Rue grabbed Shirley by the neck of her uniform and dragged her back near the stage, out of the devil wind she had so disliked. A shard of stained glass poked out of Shirley’s belly. Rue could have plucked it, but didn’t; a pretty rose had been etched into the glass, and humans liked their corpses to have flowers. Rue spied another portrait of the woman gracing the back wall, her smile inappropriately brightening the room. But no drapes. The rug in the corner would suffice as a shroud but—as if it knew Rue was thinking about it—the rug twitched.
A man’s hand crept forth, mouse-like, from the rug’s folds, scritching against the wooden floor. Another servant, judging by the black sleeve and white cuff. The white cuff stained with blood.
“Allan?”
Rue tamped down her knee-jerk contempt for the sight of a grown man hiding beneath a rug while Shirley bled to death in a window; she supposed it was smart to hide when you were frail.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, making her voice soft and dark, an alternative hiding spot he could creep toward. “You’re safe now. Whatever attacked you has fled.”
Allan was still, crippled by his own fear, and so Rue crept forward and gently took his hand. Tugged. Tumbled backward onto her butt when a frightened, snot-nosed servant didn’t emerge from the rug. The arm alone came free.
Rue stared at it stupidly, the finger bones snapping in her startled grip, until she flung it aside. When it hit the rug, the pretty gold and green leaf pattern grew dark, the fibers bristling as it bucked and shook off the severed arm, a dog shaking off water. The rug reared back, much taller than Rue and wider, a pale slick underside alive with thin slithery appendages. The “arms” Mr. Imp had mentioned. Beneath it on the floor were a few scraps of flesh—was that the back half of a foot?—and a broken scapula. At the center of the rug, partially hidden by the “arms”, a lipless, slobbering mouth sucked a round bone like a jawbreaker.
