She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  “Ms. Leech, are you okay?”

  “Okay, yes,” she said the words, then went silent. Her lips continued to move, though. A soundless mumble.

  Had she had a stroke?

  At her age, anything was possible. What was she now? Mid-seventies? Eighty? I had no idea. A twang of guilt hit me. I should know. This woman practically raised me with Jo, yet I knew so little about her.

  “Do you want me to call a doctor?”

  She said nothing, only stared, her lips quivering.

  I snapped my fingers in front of her face. Bits of dirt flaked to the floor. “Do you recognize me, Ms. Leech? Do you know who I am?”

  “I know what happens next,” she sang this more than spoke the words, a high girlish tone. Her lips formed a quick grin, then fell flat. She followed this with, “You are Jack Thatch, son of Edward Thatch and Kaitlyn Gargery, the boy across the hall, the bringer of groceries. Stealer of books. That’s who you are.”

  Gargery. My mother’s maiden name.

  I held up the yearbook and opened to her page. “Do you know why these people are circled? Look—here’s my mother, and my father, Stella’s father, Richard, and her mother, Emma…”

  “Ah, Stella,” she said softly. “Cute as a button, that one.” Her eyes looked to some distant object. Then, she added for no reason, “Twenty-seven.”

  “Twenty-seven what?” I flipped through the pages, holding the yearbook up to her face as I came to each circled image. “There are thirteen people circled. Who are they? You knew them all, didn’t you? Why are they circled?”

  Her gaze was blank again.

  I showed her the inscriptions at the front. Hey Eddie, Get a haircut, you shit! – Gene Glaspie. Gene Glaspie’s photo was not circled. I checked. “This is my father’s yearbook. Eddie. He’s not in his grave. Where is he? Do you know? What happened to him? Why did he leave this book for me? Why did he circle these photographs? Who are these people?” I turned to the back, to her picture, held it up. “I know you know!” I shouted these last words, unable to control the adrenaline coursing through my body, the book shaking in my hands.

  “Three,” she whispered.

  “Three what?!?”

  The gun came up fast, a black metal blur in her right hand from under the sheets to her mouth. She pressed it so far back into her throat, I thought she planned to swallow it. Her thumb cocked back the hammer and—

  I saw the back of her head explode out over the bed a fraction of a second before I heard the explosion of the bullet leaving the chamber. A rush of air pattered my face. All the air left the room, and the loud blast was replaced by a louder ringing in my ears.

  Ms. Leech sat there for a moment, her eyes frozen with a quick wonder. Then she slouched forward and dropped from the bed to the floor.

  I backed out of the room, out of her apartment, crossed the hall into my own apartment, and closed the door as quickly as I could. I tried to catch my breath, needed to catch my breath, but this night simply wasn’t going to let me.

  Sitting on top of my backpack was a fifth of Jameson whiskey, along with a note:

  Welcome to the party, Jack! Toast with me.

  – David

  I grabbed the Jameson bottle and note and managed to get back to my car before the shakes started, barely. I tore the cap off and took a hardy chug, welcoming the warmth as it burned away the—adrenaline, fear, anxiety, confusion, pain, sadness, hatred, anger—churning under my skin. I didn’t care where the bottle came from. I didn’t care what the bottle might represent. I didn’t care if the bottle was laced with the most acidic of poisons (I think part of me hoped it was). I needed the whiskey to drive away the image of Ms. Leech etched into the back of my eyelids. I would keep the drinking in check, though, goddamnit, I would keep it in check. I could do that. I would do that. To prove this to myself, I drank only enough to lower a veil over the world. Then I twisted the cap back on and dropped the bottle on the floorboard of the passenger seat.

  I was back on I-79 before I realized I had even started the car, and I was driving fast, nearly twenty miles-per-hour over the posted limit. I eased back on the accelerator, stopped swerving from lane to lane, and fell in line with the rest of the morning traffic. These people, these drones, driving to work, putting on makeup, eating breakfast sandwiches and laughing at the stupid little jokes coming from the radio. They had no idea. None of them.

  When I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror, I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. My hair was filthy and matted, eyes bloodshot. My skin was covered in dirt and mud and little specs of red. I tried not to think about those. I took Exit 63, just outside of Wexford, and pulled into the back of a Phillips 66 gas station. The bathroom door was locked, but someone had crowbarred the metal doorframe, rendering the heavy dead bolt useless. Inside, a loop of rope hung from the door, and someone had screwed a crooked hook into the wall to create a makeshift interior lock. I pulled the door closed, twisted the rope around the hook, and stripped out of my clothes. I expected the water from the tap to be brown, but it flowed clear and icy cold. I took what Auntie Jo would have called a “whore’s bath.” The paper towel dispenser was empty, so I used one of the shirts I’d packed to wipe away the grit from my face and hair. When finished, I changed into clean clothes from by pack, stuffed my dirty shirt, jeans, underwear, and socks into the trash in the corner of the room, then took the entire trash bag out and stuffed it into the Dumpster at the corner of the parking lot inside a cardboard box that once contained frozen burritos.

  Back in my car, I shoved the bottle of Jameson under the passenger seat and checked my somewhat improved reflection in the mirror. I got back on the highway, careful not to speed again.

  4

  When David Pickford climbed back into the white Chevy Suburban followed by the two others who had accompanied him into the Leech woman’s apartment, he felt renewed and completely invigorated. Hearing the gunshot that followed brought a smile to his face that would remain for the rest of the day. Even from behind the six car-lengths that separated them, he could feel Thatch unraveling.

  “Wipe that smugness from your face. It’s unbecoming,” Ms. Oliver said from the seat beside him, cradling her useless arm.

  “You should have that stump amputated, Latrese.”

  “Don’t call me that. Oliver or Ms. Oliver, but you haven’t earned the right to utter my first name.”

  He should kill her.

  He wanted to, no doubt about that. He also felt that every death should serve a meaning or a purpose, and he had yet to determine what her death would mean or what purpose it could possibly serve. Therefore, he kept her alive. A nagging puppy yapping at his ankle.

  Her time would come soon enough.

  When he killed the last of them.

  When he had Stella to himself.

  After he spoke to every last employee of Charter and had the company running like a smooth machine.

  She’d die then. He’d see to it she died splendidly.

  “It itches,” Oliver said beside him. “All the time. This deep-seated, relentless itch in the bone, under the skin. I can’t scratch hard enough to reach it.”

  He wished he’d seen it happen—Stella’s parting gift to the old woman before disappearing to God knows where. Just a quick touch, that was all it probably took. Like a cancer burning through her flesh, ignited at her fingertip, and rolling up the old woman’s arm. He’d seen Stella do it before, and it had always fascinated him, this gift of hers. When she was younger, there hadn’t been much control, but time seemed to have improved that. She could have killed Oliver, but she hadn’t. She only wished to make her suffer.

  He found that beautiful.

  “Lob it off, damn dead thing is all it is. Smells to high heaven.”

  Oliver wouldn’t, though. She’d cling to it until the whole shriveled arm fell off on its own. Stubborn old woman that she was. To him, it was a sign of weakness. If Stella had done this to his arm, he would have cut it off h
imself, right there in front of her. That wouldn’t happen, though. He wasn’t careless.

  “When we get her back, I’ll take my pound of flesh,” Oliver said.

  “When I get her back, maybe I’ll let you.”

  5

  I got back to Penn State at a little after eleven in the morning, but I didn’t go straight to my apartment on Mifflin. Instead, I found a space on Bigler Road, quickly crossed the quad on foot, and took the back stairs up to the second floor of Geary Hall.

  I hesitated outside her door for nearly a minute with girls passing me in the hall, eyeing me curiously, whispering to each other. Some were fully dressed, others wore nothing but towels and flip-flops. Boys usually didn’t start appearing on this floor until much later in the day.

  I knocked. The knuckles on my right hand were scrapped and bruised.

  The door opened about an inch, and Kaylie peeked out from the gap, one eye closed, the other open, her hair a rat’s nest. I must have woken her.

  “I need you to hypnotize me,” I blurted out, shoving my scarred hands into my pockets.

  Kaylie stood there. She smacked her lips and yawned. “Who are you?”

  “Jack. Jack Thatch. You don’t remember?”

  Her other eye opened, and she scratched at the side of her cheek. “Oh right, Pepsi-Boy, from the melting party.”

  “Can you do it?”

  She yawned again. “Can you come back later? I haven’t slept in forever. I was up all night studying Jung’s theories on ego and personalities, and right now all I really want to do is get back to studying the unconscious mind in my bed.”

  “I need to do this now.”

  “Right now? Right this very second?”

  “Please?”

  She opened the door a few more inches and yawned again. She wore a Guns N’ Roses tee-shirt and pink panties. “I’m gonna need sustenance and three minutes to make myself presentable for semi-public consumption. There’s a vending machine at the end of the hall.”

  “What do you want—”

  Before I could get the sentence out, the door closed.

  I found the vending machines and bought two Kit Kat bars, a Snickers, and two cups of coffee. Carefully balancing everything, I returned to her room. The door was ajar. I nudged it open with my foot and stepped inside. Kaylie was sitting on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. She had brushed her hair and put on a pair of running shorts.

  Without looking up, she said, “What happened the other night…I was really drunk, I mean, really drunk. I don’t normally just invite random guys back up to my room like that. That’s not me. I don’t want you to think I’m like that.”

  “I didn’t, I mean I don’t. It’s okay, really.”

  She reached out a hand and took one of the coffees. “Hand me the sugar? It’s behind you.”

  The dorm room wasn’t very large, only about ten feet square. Two single beds lined the walls on either side, a small dresser near the door, and another folding table with a makeshift kitchen under a window covered with a towel to help keep the light out.

  I set everything down on the table beside the microwave, and a bowl containing about a thousand packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise pilfered from area fast-food restaurants. Sugar was in a large Tupperware container. I handed it to her. Kaylie drank about a third of the black coffee, then filled the cup back up with sugar, stirred it with her finger, and drank again. “The coffee from the machine is tar-water, but I think the school pipes in extra caffeine. They know what momma needs. I can feel the lights in the factory starting to come on.”

  There was a white down ski parka bunched up in the corner of the room. I nodded at it. “Yours?”

  “My roommate’s.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Dunno. She is into random guys. Why am I hypnotizing you?”

  Her eyes had come to life. She watched me now. “And why do you smell like a sewer pipe? You look like you crawled here through the mud. This is no way to impress a lady.”

  I should have showered first, but I hadn’t had time. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Frat stuff, hazing. I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Naw, not really. They’re all the same. Are those for me, too?”

  I handed her one of the Kit Kat bars and ate the second, the first thing I’d eaten since yesterday. We split the Snickers.

  “You still haven’t told me why I’m hypnotizing you.”

  I spent half the drive back trying to figure out what I was going to tell her. I didn’t want to involve someone else. The less she knew, the better. I told her my parents were both killed in a car accident when I was four. I told her parts of that day had come back to me in dreams, but not all.

  “And you want to remember the rest?”

  I nodded.

  “I think I can work with that. Have you ever been hypnotized?”

  “No.”

  She finished her coffee and reached for mine. I gave her what was left and watched her fill about an inch of the cup with more sugar before drinking it down. “Hypnosis is not like in the movies. You can count backwards, snap your fingers, and all that, but for the most part, that’s all show. Do you know where the term ‘fall asleep’ comes from?”

  I shook my head.

  “Our bodies regulate themselves with a series of chemical releases throughout the day. Adrenaline wakes us up, gives us that jolt of energy. When the sun goes down, when we lay down to sleep, our body does the opposite by releasing a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin causes us to feel drowsy, prepares our bodies to shut down. As we enter a sleep state, when we’re right at the edge, we sometimes experience a muscle twitch called a ‘hypnagogic jerk,’ which feels like falling to the nearly unconscious mind. It usually feels like it jolts us awake, but immediately after we drop off. When a person is hypnotized, we try to get them to that point, to the sweet spot either right before or right after the hypnagogic jerk. That’s when the door between our conscious and subconscious mind is open widest. When we try to recapture memories through hypnosis, we’re peeking through that door. It’s believed our minds don’t really forget anything. Memories are just stored in different ways, some deeper than others either because our brain considers them to be unimportant, or because they’re traumatic. In your case, if you were really there when the accident occurred and the moments you’ve been dreaming about really took place, we should be able to access those memories, regardless of why they were repressed.”

  She finished my coffee and set the empty cup on the table next to her bed. “Of course, your mind might have repressed these memories because they’re unbelievably horrible, possibly even damaging if recalled. If we do this, there won’t be any turning back. Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, then.”

  “Here, take this.” Kaylie handed me a small, white pill.

  “What is it?”

  “Just a Valium. You need something to help you relax. You’re a bundle of nerves right now. This won’t work if you don’t calm down.”

  I swallowed the chalky pill dry.

  She straightened the quilt on her bed and told me to lie down, then rummaged through a drawer under the Kenwood receiver atop her dresser. She produced a microcassette recorder. “I’m gonna tape this. Is that okay?”

  I nodded.

  She handed me a pair of over-the-ear Bose headphones, plugged them into the receiver, and told me to put them on. They must have had some type of noise-canceling feature built in, because when she spoke again, her voice sounded distant, as if shouted over a long distance. I could no longer hear voices in the hallway or the adjoining dorm rooms. She told me to close my eyes, and I did.

  She switched off the lights, and the pink behind my eyelids went black.

  There was an electronic hum as she turned on the receiver. A steady click filled my ears, a recording of a metronome.

  Tick�
�tock.

  Tick…tock.

  Tick…tock.

  “Okay, Jack, I want you to listen to the rhythm of that sound, like a comforting heartbeat. Breathe in through your mouth, out through your nose, let your breathing fall in time with the sound. It’s all about the sound, that comforting sound. A heartbeat. Visualize a heartbeat, that sound. The rush of your blood, the life flowing through every inch of your body. Warm and comforting. My voice brings you deeper, faster and deeper, faster and deeper in a warm, calm, peaceful state of relaxation. Like sinking deep down into a warm bath.”

  Tick…tock.

  Tick…tock.

  “Sinking down and shutting down. Sinking down and shutting down. Sinking down and shutting down completely in the enveloping warmth,” she said from so far away. Repeating. “Warm and calm, a blanket, snug and—”

  When my eyes opened, Kaylie had her back to me. She was on the phone. I pulled off the headphones.

  “…not what I agreed to,” she said into the receiver.

  “Kaylie?” I said. My throat was dry.

  She turned then, her eyes wide. Kaylie hung up the phone.

  I sat up slowly on the bed, my arms and legs heavy, as if waking from a deep sleep. I didn’t remember sleeping, though.

  The window behind the towel was dark. But that couldn’t be right. It was only around noon when we started. “Who were you talking to?”

  An odd flavor lingered in my mouth for a second, then was gone.

  Chocolate milk?

  “Did it work?”

  Kaylie’s eyes narrowed. She picked up the white ski parka and slipped the coat on. “I need to get to the library, and you need to leave.”

  I frowned. “You said that was your roommate’s.”

  “You need to go. I didn’t sign on for this.” She folded her arms defensively at her chest and nodded at the door. “Now.”

  I stood and grabbed the phone. “Who did you call?”

  She reached for the door, pulled it open.