She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  The .38 from her nightstand felt cold and heavy in her hand as she quietly lowered her feet to the floor and crossed the room, ignoring the arthritic pain burning in her legs.

  Although she lived alone, she aways closed and locked her bedroom door. A yellow bathrobe hung from a hook on the back of her door. She pushed the robe aside and pressed her ear against the wood. The door was solid wood, not that cheap pressboard junk they sold today, but a thick slab of oak, original to the apartment.

  She heard nothing.

  Elfrieda began to wonder if she heard anything at all. Maybe it was nothing more than the settling of the old building or the expanding and contracting of the structure itself as it always did when spring ushered away the cold grip of winter. Maybe she dreamed the sound, imagined the sound entirely, maybe—

  Another squeak.

  The board beneath her bare left foot moved slightly when weight found that same board on the opposite side of the door.

  Somebody was standing there.

  Elfrieda drew in a deep breath, tried to steady the hand holding the .38—she was shaking so. “I have a gun!”

  Her intended shout came out muffled and weak, the thick wood of the door eating her words.

  From the other side came a man’s voice—soft, pure. Sounding more like the music created by a finely tuned set of chimes than the spoken word. “I know you have a gun. You need to put the gun down and unlock the door.”

  Elfrieda set the gun down on the top of the dresser and flipped the lock on the doorknob.

  “Now open the door and step back,” the voice said.

  She did so without any hesitation.

  The door swung open. A man was standing there. He had dark hair and darker eyes and a smile that somehow put her at ease, even though that was darkest of all. Behind him stood two women in long, white coats. Both watched but remained silent.

  As Elfrieda completed each instruction, she wondered why she was doing as she was told. She didn’t want to. She wanted to point the gun at the center of this man’s chest and pull the trigger and keep pulling the trigger until the chamber clicked empty. She couldn’t, though. The gun was already out of reach, and when she tried to force her legs to walk back to it, they didn’t obey. Instead they stepped backward, as instructed, until they reached the edge of the bed.

  “Sit down, Elfrieda.”

  She did.

  The three intruders stepped into her bedroom, her private place, uninvited.

  “Are you real?” she asked.

  He tilted his head and smiled again. “We no longer need you to watch the boy. Do you remember when I asked you to watch the boy, all those years ago? I was a child myself then. They made me phone you, so impersonal.”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “You knew my parents.”

  “Yes.”

  “What were their names?”

  “Keith and Jaquelyn Pickford.”

  “And my name?”

  “David. You’re David Pickford. You’re a beautiful man, David Pickford.”

  He smiled again. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Elfrieda Leech stared past him.

  We no longer need you to watch the boy. Not they. Charter had told her the Pickford boy would never leave his room. Could never leave his room. Held against his will. He should hate them, despise them. There should only be they, not we.

  How could he be standing in her bedroom?

  Elfrieda Leech eyed the butt of the .38 on the edge of the dresser. She wanted to push past these people, take the gun in her hand, kill them all. She couldn’t move, though. Her body wouldn’t obey her. “Why aren’t you wearing white?”

  Unlike the other two intruders, David Pickford wore a black leather jacket over a deep red tee-shirt and denim jeans. If he carried a gun, she didn’t see one. Nothing clipped to his belt, no shoulder holster.

  “I don’t like white,” he replied. “White is a non-color, the absence of color. A canvas waiting for a stain.”

  “All the monsters wear white.” She found the words difficult to speak. Like movement, they fought her, but she got them out.

  “Not all the monsters.”

  “Your parents…what you…”

  “Shh.” He knelt down in front of her and took her hand in his. “We’re not here to talk about my parents.”

  She tried to respond, but her lips, her mouth, wouldn’t move.

  “I’m sorry, you may speak,” David said.

  Whatever spell, his spell, broke.

  “Why are you here?” she was able to get out.

  “Charter dropped the ball, I’m afraid. I’ve decided to step in, to correct the matter, clean up the mess.”

  “Okay.”

  He went on, “You’re a part of that mess.”

  “I know.”

  He squeezed her fingers until they turned white. “When we leave, you’re going to wait three hours. Then you’re going to take your gun, put it in your mouth, nice and deep, and pull the trigger.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what? Tell me.”

  “When you leave, I’m going to wait three hours. Then I’m going to take the gun, put it in my mouth, nice and deep, and pull the trigger.”

  “Are you afraid to die, Elfrieda?”

  “No.”

  He released her hand. It dropped limply into her lap. “Do you have regrets?”

  “I never had a child,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “I couldn’t pass it on. But I wanted a child.”

  He thought about this for a moment. “I was told you had no reaction to the shot. You have nothing to pass on.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I had no reaction.”

  “So you have nothing to pass on,” he said again.

  Elfrieda said nothing. From the corner of her eye, she could see the gun. She willed herself to get up, to jump toward it, to grab the .38 from the dresser. Her body ignored her. She began to tremble.

  “Your limbs are as heavy as lead. If you attempt to do anything other than what I ask, you will feel as if you are on fire. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Elfrieda looked away from the gun, looked at him, stopped fighting, stopped trembling.

  “I’d like you to tell me where I can find the others.”

  “There are no more ‘others.’”

  “Don’t lie to me, Elfrieda. It’s unbecoming of a woman such as yourself. Lying can also be quite painful. Telling a lie might feel as bad as, say…” David thought about this for a moment, then he had it. “Lying feels like swallowing a thousand fire ants, their stings as they ravage your throat from the inside. Wouldn’t that be just horrible?”

  Elfrieda Leech nodded.

  “Tell me where I can find the others.”

  “There are no more…” But even as she said the words, the pain registered on her face. He skin went taut and pale, her eyes nearly popped out of her head. She screamed horribly loud.

  David seemed to find enjoyment in this. He gave her a moment, he let her screams die away. “You know, telling the truth can have the opposite effect. With the truth, all that pain just washes down the drain, replaced with the most incredible euphoric sensation. So brilliant, it defies description. I imagine you’d like to feel that? Rather than those horrible ants?”

  Elfrieda nodded quickly, tears streaming from her eyes.

  “Tell me, Elfrieda, where can I find the others?”

  This time, she did tell him. She told him all she knew. She didn’t know where they all were, only Dewey Hobson and the Brotherton woman, and that would have to do.

  When she finished, when David was certain there was nothing else to gain, he smiled again. “Good. That’s very good. We’ll be leaving then, I think.” He turned, started for the door, then paused. With his back to her, he asked one final question. “Tell me one more time, what will happen next, after we go?”

  Elfrieda
Leech took a breath. “When you leave, I’m going to wait three hours. Then I’m going to take the gun, put it in my mouth, nice and deep, and pull the trigger.”

  “How many seconds in three hours?”

  “10,800.”

  “It was a pleasure knowing you, Elfrieda.”

  “You too, David.”

  The three intruders left then, leaving her bedroom door open. The dead bolt slid back in place at the front door. She had no idea how they had gotten a key.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Elfrieda Leech remained perfectly still. In her mind, she began to tick away the seconds—10,800, 10,799, 10,798…the clock on her nightstand whirring along with her, the click of plastic on plastic as each minute fell away.

  3

  My shovel struck the top of my father’s wooden casket at a little past three in the morning, and by a quarter after, I had cleared away the entire surface. Although I had only been four when he died, I remembered the casket. The black wood had been polished to a bright shine, so much so I could see my distorted reflection in the finish from my seat next to Auntie Jo in the front row. Someone placed a rose on top, and I thought for sure Auntie Jo would knock the flower off since there wasn’t one on Momma’s casket, too. She didn’t, though.

  That black shine was long gone, the bare wood showing through in spots, the metal of the hinges and latch rusted. The wood had begun to rot, and with a little pressure on the blade of the shovel, the screws pulled right out and the latch popped off.

  Who put the flower there, Auntie Jo?

  Some asshole.

  If I stopped moving, I knew I wouldn’t go through with what I needed to do, so I didn’t allow myself to stop. I didn’t allow myself to think. Instead, I lowered myself into the small space I dug out to the left of the casket and jammed the edge of the shovel under the lip of the lid. Although the rain stopped, puddled water soaked through my shoes, and when I pressed down on the handle of the shovel, when I leveraged it with my weight, water squooshed between my toes and I wondered what it would be like to sink down into that mud, to disappear within the earth.

  The top of the casket snapped open with an audible pop! There was a rush of air both in and out of the casket, matched only by the deep breath I sucked into my lungs and forced back out.

  I tossed the shovel out of the hole and wrapped my fingers around the lid of my father’s casket, prying it open against the weight of more than a decade.

  I’m not sure when my eyes closed, but they did and they didn’t want to open again, but I forced them anyway. When they did, I found the courage to look down into the box.

  My father was not inside.

  I don’t think I expected him to be in the casket. At some point while digging, I began to tell myself he wouldn’t be in there, and as I repeated that mantra, it became easier to fill the shovel, easier to dig, to keep going. Seeing the empty casket, though, knowing for sure, that brought the tears and I collapsed in the hole, water and mud soaking my jeans. My hands gripped the side of the empty casket, my body quivering, and my mind so filled with thoughts I couldn’t make sense of any of them.

  I buried my face in my filthy hands and cried, all the emotion of the past hours coming to a head.

  When I finally brought myself to look back inside, I was certain he had never been in the casket. Unlike the wooden exterior, the satin lining of the casket appeared new, only slightly yellowed from its time below ground, preserved by the airtight seal. A pillow sat where his head would have rested, and that pillow didn’t have so much as a crease down the center.

  In the center of the casket sat a cardboard box.

  The box I had seen my father give Auntie Jo.

  Inside the cardboard box, I found two books. A Penn State 1978 yearbook, and a paperback copy of Great Expectations.

  Nothing else.

  Not a damn thing else.

  I wanted to scream. If not for the fear of discovery, I surely would have.

  I’m not sure what I expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t this.

  The anxiety, fear, and uncertainty of earlier quickly turned to anger and frustration.

  There had to be something else. What the hell was I supposed to do with an old yearbook and another copy of that damn Dickens book? Why would someone go through all this trouble for something so mundane?

  A note fell from the folds of Great Expectations:

  Your mother is at rest, Jack. Please let her rest.

  I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Not Auntie Jo’s. My father’s?

  Filling the grave back in went much faster than digging it up. I replaced the sod as best I could and scattered dead leaves left over from fall over the plot. When finally satisfied that my night’s work would only be discovered by someone specifically looking for it, I scooped up the yearbook, the novel, and shovel, and ran back through the woods to my car, carefully watching the cemetery grounds and the trees for any sign of another.

  Inside my car, I pressed the button for the overhead light and flipped through the pages of Great Expectations. The book appeared to be new, unread, many of the pages still sticking together. I expected to find something written inside, but there was nothing. The first page contained a detailed map of England—Exeter, London, Manchester, Whidbey, Newcastle upon Tyne, and dozens of other major cities labeled. The novel itself appeared to be complete, beginning with the same line engrained in my head since childhood:

  My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

  My hands (and my clothes and every inch of my skin, for that matter) were covered in dirt, and each page I touched came away smudged and filthy. I rubbed them on my jeans and that only made things worse. I reached down and wiped them as best I could on the carpet under the gearshift.

  I set aside Great Expectations and moved the yearbook into the light. Unlike the novel, the pages of the yearbook were well-worn, some folded over. The inside flap of this book was filled with handwritten notes and scribbles—Maybe next year you’ll learn to hold your beer! – Al Waters, Hey Eddie, Get a haircut, you shit! – Gene Glaspie, Two more years to go, good luck with that! – Enid Sather…there were dozens of them, but none written by names I recognized.

  I turned to the first dog-eared page—Class of 1979 across the top. The photographs of three students were circled on the opposite page:

  Perla Beyham

  Cammie Brotherton

  Jaquelyn Breece

  Two on the next page:

  Jeffery Dalton

  Garret Dotts

  The three pages that followed had no circled photographs. The next I found was a face I recognized—Kaitlyn Gargery—my mother, young and beautiful—Gargery being her maiden name. I continued to turn the pages, slower now. Each dog-eared page contained circled images:

  Penelope Maudlin

  Richard Nettleton

  Keith Pickford

  Emma Tackett

  The third to last marked page had my father—Edward Thatch. The final page was someone I did not know, named Lester Woodford. He wore thick glasses and had unruly curly hair.

  I flipped back to Richard Nettleton. Stella’s father? Then to Emma Tackett—possibly Stella’s mother, like my mother, listed with her maiden name? None of them married yet, too early in their lives.

  The final marked page wasn’t among the student pictures at the front, but was at the rear of the book with the staff members. Although much younger, it was a face I recognized, a name I knew well—Elfrieda Leech, Guidance Counselor.

  I dropped the book into the passenger seat, started the car, and raced down Nobles Lane as the sun began to climb over the horizon.

  The first time I knocked, I did so lightly. It was just a little after six in the morning, and many in the building were still sleeping. Ms. Leech hadn’t answered that first time, nor the second time, so this time I pounded on her doo
r with the side of my fist. “Ms. Leech! Open the door!”

  Her door did not open, but 309 at the end of the hall did. Cecile Dreher stuck her head out, her hair still in curlers, and prepared to yell at me, then thought better of it when she saw I was covered in dirt and grime. She gave me an angry grunt and ducked back inside.

  “Ms. Leech!” I knocked again, this time with the spine of the yearbook. “Ms. Leech!”

  “Dammit…” I went back to my apartment and shuffled through the keys hanging near the front door. They weren’t labeled, but I knew Leech’s key was silver with the brand-name Curtis stamped on the side. She gave the key to Auntie Jo years ago. Ms. Leech had a key to our apartment too, although I don’t think she ever used it.

  Back across the hall, I slipped the key into her lock and snapped the dead bolt open, then let myself in. “Ms. Leech? It’s me, Jack Thatch. I’m coming in.”

  The last time I had been in Ms. Leech’s apartment was with Gerdy, nearly a year ago. Since then, the stacks of newspapers had continued to grow, leaving little space to maneuver around them.

  A light glowed in the back bedroom.

  “Ms. Leech? It’s Jack, from across the hall. I know today’s not grocery day, but I have to talk to you. You didn’t answer your door, so I let myself in. Are you awake?”

  As I turned sideways and worked my way through the mess, I began to wonder if something was wrong. Leech rarely had visitors. If she had a heart attack or stroke or even slipped and fell, she might go days without being found, maybe weeks. As far as I knew, her only contact with the outside world was with the weekly grocery deliveries, and I had no idea who Matteo arranged to take care of that.

  I found her, very much alive, sitting on the edge of her bed.

  Her face looked frightfully white, the wrinkles set so deep in her skin they might have been carved in with a chisel. She watched me enter the room with unblinking eyes. Her left hand held a fistful of quilt. She squeezed the material, kneaded the cloth like raw dough. Her right hand disappeared under the sheets. She wore a nightgown similar to the ones Auntie Jo had worn, all frilly lace and silk, stolen from someone’s closet in the seventies. Her feet were bare, her toes pressing into the hardwood.