She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  When it was over, David said to her, “You need to feed, Stella.”

  Stella nodded and slowly got back to her feet, only inches from Latrese Oliver.

  Again, I tried to go to her.

  Again, she told me to stay back. “Like the lake,” she forced out through clenched teeth.

  At her hands, not only did the weeds die and crumble away, the concrete grew dark, cracked, aged. When she was finally able to stand again, the concrete surrounding her looked to be a dozen or more years older than the rest, an age spot on the neglected pavement.

  The whites of Stella’s eyes were lined with red, her skin like snow. She reached for Latrese Oliver, her fingers stopping less than an inch from her ruined face, quivering in the air.

  The temperature had dropped considerably after the sun went down, and Oliver’s breath hung in the air, a tiny white cloud. “David Pickford is for you, Stella. I led him here for you. So much evil there, perhaps enough to satisfy your appetite, perhaps not. Duncan Bellino, too. Between the two, you can stem the tide on your need. I can only imagine your pain, five days late. It’s a wonder you’re still with us. Take them, take me, if you must. I willingly give myself to you. I will gladly die if my sacrifice means you will live. My life will become part of yours, and that is how I will live on. Take us all, take everyone, take—”

  Stella collapsed again, her face drained of color. She fell to the ground beside Oliver, and rather than scramble away, the old woman nudged closer. She reached for Stella’s limp arm, took her hand in hers, and pressed Stella’s fingers to her good cheek. “For you, Stella! For you!”

  Oliver let out the most horrible cackle of a laugh as the skin beneath Stella’s fingers grew black and gray, smoldering in the hottest of white. That laugh turned to a scream. The scream turned to a shriek as the blackness spread all over her, eating around her dead flesh, finding every ounce of life until none remained. Burned, but not burned.

  I watched Latrese Oliver die, her body dropping to the ground beside Stella. Stella nearly fell on top of her, hyperventilating, each gasp of air harsher than the last. She put a palm to the concrete to steady herself, and the concrete dried and crumbled under her fingertips.

  “That is fantastic!” David shouted out, his burn scar stretched taut with his growing smile. “Who wants to go next? Do we have another volunteer?”

  Stella twisted her head, her bloodshot eyes finding mine. “Not…enough…”

  Unlike before, when the concrete simply aged, this time the cement crumbled beneath her. The cement chipped and cracked and turned to dust under her fingers, her palm. The whitish gray color gave way to powder.

  Stella said. “I can’t…stop it…”

  We all saw it, the growing circle beneath her.

  Preacher tried to stand, could not.

  Cammie and my father couldn’t move either.

  David took a step back, eyeing the concrete curiously.

  “We can’t move,” my father said. “David told us we can’t move.”

  “Let them go, David. We need to run,” I said, watching the circle grow larger.

  “Nobody’s running,” David replied. He looked at them and pointed. “None of you. You might as well be made of stone.”

  David took another step back.

  Stella gulped down air. Her eyes pinched shut. She shook her head in defiance, but it did little good. Whatever was happening, it was increasing in intensity rather than slowing down. Growing stronger. “Can’t…stop…”

  The circle expanded, weeds and grass shriveling away, concrete aging a hundred years in only moments, dying.

  When the circle grew wide enough to reach one of the people in white, a man of about thirty years, this circle of death spread beneath his feet like the expanding waters of a puddle. His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and he screamed. From the folds of his coat, his fingertips turned black, his forearms, then his neck. He fell to the ground before the charring black reached his face. David’s instructions prevented him from running. The death devoured him, then, without hesitation, continued to expand out from Stella’s crouched body, widening, spreading. Faster, hungrier, with each taste of life.

  The growing death reached me next, and although David hadn’t told me I couldn’t move, fright held me still, and I waited for the pain to come. I watched the concrete under my feet crack and decay. then the circle expanded beyond me, continued.

  “Jack!” my father shouted. “Take my hand!”

  At first, I didn’t understand.

  “The tests! Your gift—like a…bubble.” That last word barely fell from his lips, David’s control stronger than my father’s will to speak.

  I tore off my latex gloves, threw them aside, and grabbed his hand as the death reached him, squeezed his fingers between mine. The edge of the circle crawled under him, kept going.

  He managed to reach over and take Cammie’s hand, and she took Dunk’s. Dunk reached for Preacher, and Preacher grabbed Darby as the circle continued to grow all around us.

  David turned and looked out toward the open field and railroad tracks. He considered trying to outrun it. We all knew the truth, though. As this hungry, dark shadow grew larger, it became faster, hungrier. There was no outrunning such a thing. He nearly turned and tried, when a tiny little hand reached out to him.

  David grabbed at Darby’s outstretched arm and fingers and took hold with both hands as the death moved under him, moved past, growing so fast you could hear it eating away at all within its path. First just a crackle, then a rumble, then the thunderous anger of a tornado unleashed to feed.

  People in white fell all around us, dropping to the ground with shouts and screams, their bodies turning to black faster than they could fall, dead before they hit the ground—five, ten, dozens.

  Through it all, Stella remained at the center. Her fingers pulsing against the ground, her arms twitching under her, her body shaking uncontrollably.

  The circle grew beyond the ruined concrete, burning through the surrounding grass and weeds like a flameless wildfire, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake. It reached the trees and the first fell, then another, another after that. Tall timbers dropping like bowling pins.

  I thought it would go on forever, devouring all, a blanket of lifelessness pulled tight and cinched shut at the edges, and it felt like that, too. If someone had asked me, I would have said this went on for an hour, more than an hour, but in truth, it was all over in under a minute.

  Stella fell.

  She dropped to the ground in utter exhaustion.

  The trees had been enough. Finally enough.

  The world went silent, save for a train whistle somewhere in the distance.

  The ground all around us was black. A giant, concentric circle of nothingness with Stella’s tired, defeated body lying in a heap at the center.

  The people in white were gone.

  All dead.

  Unlike the bodies found in the past, burned but not burned, of these, there was nothing left. The energy that had burst from Stella, her hunger, her curse, drained away the life all around her absolute. There was a blackened dust, nothing more.

  A raindrop struck my head, followed by another as the heavens opened and began cleansing Mother Earth before the stain of what happened here had a chance to set.

  To my right, my father still grasped my hand, his eyes unimaginably wide as he looked out at the void left behind, as he looked from there, to Stella, to the ground beneath him and finally up at me.

  Cammie, Preacher, and David looked out over the ravaged grounds of Carrie Furnace with equal awe, their heads swiveling.

  Preacher was first to break from the reverie. He released Cammie and Darby’s hands and stood. He straightened his body and turned toward David, ready to attack.

  David took a step back and opened his mouth, and not a sound came out. This seemed to surprise him. His eyes narrowed in confusion. His free hand went to his throat, his other still clasped in Darby’s tiny grip.<
br />
  David’s mouth mimed a shout, a scream, yet nothing came out but the release of a used breath.

  Darby looked up at him, squeezed his hand in hers, and smiled.

  I think David realized what happened the same moment I did. He looked down at his hand in Darby’s—the girl who could not speak—her gift finally understood, her gift graciously shared with him.

  He broke from her hand and backed away in complete silence as Cammie and my father stood, his spell on them broken. He tried to tell them to get back down, silently mouthing the words, but this did nothing.

  David Pickford ran.

  We watched him run toward the gully and disappear into the trees on the opposite side. All of us too exhausted to give chase.

  The train whistle broke through the silence, much closer now.

  I turned back to Stella in time to see her get to her feet. She too began to back away, she too mouthed silent words as tears streamed down her face, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry. I love you, I always have, please know that.”

  How she found the energy.

  Where she found the energy, I may never know.

  Stella ran toward the train tracks.

  I ran after her, the muscles in my legs screaming as I pushed them harder than any other moment in my life. I closed the gap, but Stella still reached the train tracks before me. As I neared, she bent forward with both hands on her knees, openly crying, violent sobs shaking every bit of her.

  If those first raindrops had only been exploratory, the ones to follow next came with purpose—thick, cold, heavy, drenching drops.

  The train whistle blew again. The freight liner was barreling down on us, a single bright headlight slicing the night.

  Stella stood in the center of the tracks, her wet hair covering half her face as she turned to me. “It was him, Jack! Oh God, please believe me. It was David, things he told me so long ago. I couldn’t stop myself. I so desperately wanted to, but I couldn’t, and I was so far gone—like the lake, but much worse than the lake—once it started, I couldn’t pull it back. I tried, Jack. Please believe me. You of all people need to know I tried.” She looked out over the grounds of Carrie Furnace, at the blackened fields and spent concrete, at the building beyond, knowing nothing escaped her hunger, all life depleted. “Oh God, I killed them all, didn’t I? Every one of them!” She bent over again.

  I stepped over the railroad tie and went to her. I placed my palm on her back. I told her my father, Preacher, Cammie, and Darby were still alive. I told her David ran.

  “He can’t hurt you, me, or anyone else anymore. It’s all over.”

  She didn’t hear this, the guilt overwhelming.

  “I didn’t mean to, Jack. I didn’t. I told you I’d never do it again and didn’t want to, but David—” she broke off as the train whistle cut through the night again. Close now.

  Stella stood up, looked toward the train, then turned to me. “I need to die, Jack. Then it will all be over. I’m worse than David, I’m a monster. I bring nothing but death, to every single thing I touch. I can’t live with that, not anymore. I can’t do it again, not in another year, not ever. I was prepared to die, I need to die. Tonight. Now.”

  The train whistle again. The conductor no doubt able to see us now, directly in his path.

  Loud, the whistle.

  “I love you, Jack, I will always love you. Please forgive me. Please remember me. Please—”

  Both my gloves were gone, lost on the ground somewhere back near my father and the others.

  I pulled Stella close.

  I placed both bare hands on either side of her face.

  I kissed her.

  And Stella Nettleton kissed me back.

  PART 6

  “You have been in every line I have ever read.”

  ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

  August 8, 2010

  Thirty-Four Years Old

  1

  “Read.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Read.”

  “You make me read it every year.”

  I tapped a finger against the dark granite and cleared my throat.

  He rolled his eyes. “Josephine “Jo” Gargery. March 12, 1956 to April 28, 1993. Sister, Aunt, Friend.”

  He frowned, as he did every other year, and looked over at me. “Didn’t you say her middle name was Laura?”

  “It was.”

  “Then why does it say Jo?”

  “That’s what everyone called her.”

  “Huh. That’s a boy’s name.”

  I smiled at this. He said the same thing last year, too. “She was a tough woman.”

  “And she raised you?”

  “By hand, yeah. All by herself.”

  “After your mommy and daddy died?”

  I nodded.

  He sat Indian style on the soft grass, and he shifted his weight to the gravestone on Jo’s left. “That’s your momma?”

  A little moss had taken hold in the lettering. We missed it when we first got here. I scraped it away with my fingernail. “Kaitlyn Gargery Thatch. February 16, 1958 to August 8, 1980. Loving wife, mother, and sister,” I said softly.

  “And that’s your daddy?”

  His stone was clean, a fresh yellow rose in the vase. I nodded. “That’s your grandfather.”

  He read that one aloud without any prompting from me. He was a good boy. When he finished, he looked to the stone on my father’s left. “Who’s Abel Mag…es…witch?”

  “Abel Magwitch,” I corrected.

  “Abel Magwitch. Who is he?”

  “That’s my father, too.”

  “You had two daddies?”

  I thought about this for a moment. I tried to explain it last year and completely flubbed it up. He had asked questions for nearly a week, before the subject finally faded away. He was six then, seven now. A world away. This time, I went with the line I carefully crafted on the drive this morning. “I only had one daddy, but he lived two lives.”

  “So he gets two graves?”

  “Yeah. One for each.”

  This seemed to please him. “Wow, so cats must take up a lot of room in pet cemeteries.”

  “They most certainly do.”

  There would always be next year.

  My father, Edward Thatch, died for the second time on July 20, 2006—four years ago—eight years after the events at Carrie Furnace. He was only forty-eight. The end came swift, as it usually does, but his death had been drawn out for nearly those full eight years.

  At first, he became forgetful.

  I deeply regret that first year, because we did nothing but argue. I’d ask him about the car accident that took my mother’s life and the events to immediately follow, and he’d provide nothing but cryptic responses, these short answers that only led to more questions. Then I noticed even those answers were fluid. He initially told me he hid in California for nearly a year after fleeing Pennsylvania, but then when asked again, he said he hid in Georgia. I’d ask him about the tests Charter ran on me when I was young and he said he couldn’t recall anything beyond what I already knew. A year later, he barely remembered even those events. I found myself reminding him, prompting him to remember.

  The doctors called it early-onset Alzheimer’s.

  I thought he was faking, and that only led to more fights and confrontations. It wasn’t until I caught him standing in front of the mirror one morning, attempting to put on a tie. I watched him for nearly five minutes—he’d wrap it around his neck, make it about halfway through the process, then untwist and start all over again. When he spotted me at the door, he asked me to find my mother. He said she usually tied it for him. This was in May of 2000. He was only forty-two. The doctors ran a series of tests and found severe genetic mutations in three genes—APP, PSEN 1, and PSEN 2. Typically, a mutation in only one could lead to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Mutations in three were rare. My father and I had a pretty good handle on the root of those mutations, but we didn’t tell the do
ctor about Charter or the shot. Instead, we took his pamphlets and list of recommended reading, and I drove him home. He moved into my old apartment in Brentwood. I was just glad to see someone living in that place.

  He took to calling me Pip. At first, I thought it was because he heard Stella use the name, but then I remembered the envelopes, my monthly cash deliveries, Pip written neatly on each. I thought about the copy of Great Expectations he left for me in his grave. I realized the envelopes had been yet another clue, one meant to draw my focus to that book when I eventually found it. He saw himself as my Abel Magwitch, Pip’s benefactor in the novel. I asked him about this once, but he only smiled.

  Less than two months after his diagnosis, my father stopped speaking. One week after that, he stopped getting out of bed on his own. I had no choice but to place him in a facility capable of monitoring his condition and taking care of him on a day-to-day basis. He spent his remaining six years in Cloverdale Assisted Living in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I visited often, and I always found him in the same place, in his wheelchair at a large window overlooking the west lawn and a small duck pond.

  Prior to his death, the nurses said he never spoke while awake, but he often mumbled in his sleep. He said the name, David Pickford, often, but they could make out nothing else. When they asked if that name meant something to me, I told them no.

  My father died for the second time at his favorite window. For that, I was grateful. I wanted him to find peace with what he had done. I wanted to forgive him, and I told him that I did. I found it far easier to convince him of this than it was to convince myself.

  Prior to the disease taking complete hold, my father signed power of attorney over his estate to me, and with Matteo’s help, I was able to complete a financial picture. Without going into detail here, this being a painful subject for me, we found Charter sent my father ten thousand dollars per month beginning one month after my mother died and continuing until the middle of 1996, about two years after Pickford “cleaned up” Charter. He had left many of the employees with instructions akin to autopilot, and someone in accounting saw fit to continue payments to my father.