Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  Without the instrument, he no longer resembled a wavering flame—but a cold taper.

  His chest gleamed in the firelight with the blood that never went away or dried.

  “Tell me,” I said, making a feeble gesture toward the portraits, the faces identical to the ones in the photo I’d found in the attic. “What were they like?”

  This wasn’t how I’d planned to begin tonight’s conversation, but it struck me as a good way to segue into what I’d come to ask of him. Anything that might walk him back to his true self, to Erik.

  “My family?” he asked, swiveling toward the paintings. “They were . . . cold. And warm. Flawed . . . yet simultaneously perfect.”

  “So you take after them,” I said, the words leaping free of my lips before I gave them permission to, a nervous and ironic laugh underscoring the observation.

  He turned to regard me, that skeletal mask free of any trace of humor. Pressing my lips together, I banished my almost-smile and forged forward.

  “It must be painful to have their likenesses, their ghosts, so close.”

  “They are everywhere,” he said with barely any voice at all, his gaze returning to the portraits. “Forever as present as they are absent.”

  “We . . . don’t put up pictures of Mom,” I said. “I have them, of course. But . . . they’re hard to look at. Even after all this time. I can’t imagine what it must be like walking through a house filled with so many memories. But, then again, after today . . . I guess I can.”

  “It’s always as if they are merely in the next room,” he said. “Or as though I have only just missed them.”

  “Like they’ve been gone for years,” I said. “But at the same time, only just—”

  “A day,” he finished.

  Quiet pulsed, and my bravery grew. Again, I scanned my mind for some way to gently steer him in the direction I needed us to go. Before I could utter another word, though, he spoke.

  “Charlie does not know about your mother.”

  Charlie. My whole chest seized at his uttering of her name. Tears stung my eyes.

  “She’s too young to understand,” I said. “We’re afraid she . . . We don’t want her to know the truth. It’s too much.”

  “There will be pain either way,” he said.

  Will be? With a thrill of hope, I ventured on.

  “One day, when we’re both older, when she knows, I’m going to take her back to Syracuse. To see her. Mom, I mean. Even if Dad doesn’t want to go.”

  “Oh?” he asked, and it wasn’t lost on me that he didn’t jump to forbid this.

  “I sometimes wish we’d never left,” I went on. “Because even though she’s gone, even though it’s hard to look at pictures, it’s also hard being so far away. I can’t go see her. And sometimes—a lot of times, actually—it feels like I would be able to bear missing her a little more if I could just be close to her. I’m not sure if that makes sense—”

  “It makes perfect sense,” he said, his voice a little less Zedok and more . . .

  “Now Dad and Charlie are gone, too,” I said. “But also, just like you said . . . everywhere. Except I’ve been here days. You, though. You’ve been here for—”

  He swiveled his head my way, those startling eyes stopping me yet again, warning me I might have gone too far, stepped too near to his edge . . .

  Now, I told myself. Say it now.

  “Erik. I want to—”

  “No,” he said. “You mustn’t tell me why you’ve come. Allow me instead to guess.”

  I wrapped my arms around my middle, chilled by his words.

  “You’ve had time to reconsider my suit,” he went on, the softness in his voice gone, replaced by frigid irony that bordered on sarcasm. “And you’ve sought me out to offer your acceptance. What say you, then? Will you wear my ring?”

  Ice water replaced my blood.

  I’d been so close. Close enough that I couldn’t say if I’d said one word too many . . . or one too few.

  “If you’re trying to scare me,” I said, “it won’t work.”

  It was working. But he couldn’t sense that . . . could he?

  “Well,” he said through a clipped laugh. “At least I’ve graduated to trying.”

  “I came to talk to you,” I said. “Before, in the dreams, you would always talk to me.”

  “I am no dream.”

  “If you would just—”

  “You tire of your companions,” he remarked, addressing the violin. He had one hand on the lid of the case—like it was a coffin he was reluctant to shut. “I wager nothing less could have driven you to seek me out.”

  With these words, something inside of me snapped.

  “Don’t do that!” I shouted at him, and before I even knew what I was doing, I found myself stalking toward him, hands curling into fists at my sides. “Stop assuming you know everything about me. I’m not one of your masks.”

  His shoulders went rigid, the reaction letting me know I’d struck a chord.

  “You’re saying they are not the reason you’re here?”

  “No,” I snapped. “They’re actually not.”

  The truth was, I had come to negotiate.

  “I’m here to offer a trade,” I began, fear creeping over me again, because I needed this to work. “A promise for a promise.”

  “I have already stated my terms.”

  I’d prepared myself for those words. Still, they came like a knife to the stomach. Because even though I kept sifting through the darkness that had consumed him, desperate to find a glimmer of the light I’d glimpsed in him before, I never found more than a trace of it. Forging on, I pushed the pain aside.

  “So long as you’re like this,” I said, “I know better than to ask you to let me go.”

  Again, he glanced at me with something that might have been surprise, and for a moment, I felt an internal check of victory at having stolen his certainty.

  “You wish for something more than I would freely give you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And . . . if you give it to me, I promise to stay here. Meaning . . . I won’t try to leave again. And if someone comes to my rescue, I won’t go with them, either.”

  He tilted his head at me, letting me know I’d taken him off guard. “I have stolen your freedom,” he said. “And so I am curious. What could you hold as more precious than that?”

  The way he’d said “freedom.” It seemed to suggest he assumed I didn’t realize the worth of what I’d placed on the table.

  Maybe I didn’t. I did, however, recognize fully the power he held. And not just over me.

  “You have to promise not to hurt anyone else,” I said.

  He laughed, becoming a monster fully once again.

  A bitter taste rose in the back of my throat, and I resisted the urge to recoil from him.

  What was I doing? Giving away the very last of my power to this nightmare he had become?

  No. That wasn’t it. I was buying it back. Piece by piece.

  Peace by peace.

  Because I could bear it here more easily if I knew my friends were safe. And if this worked, the demand for my release would come next. By then, if I played my cards right, he would hopefully be under the influence of another mask. But . . . one thing at a time.

  “These are my terms,” I said. “I won’t try to escape again. And I won’t ask you to let me go. But, in return, you have to swear you won’t hurt anyone.”

  “In exchange for such a promise . . . you would agree to willingly remain here?” he asked. “With me? Indefinitely?”

  “I have to stay anyway, don’t I?” I asked.

  If that man who had tried to get to me yesterday came back, or if Lucas or anyone else from SPOoKy came for me, what would he do to them? If I could protect them, if he would strike this bargain with me, then
. . . did I have any other choice?

  “You expect him to come for you,” he said, his voice becoming dangerously quiet. “The boy. That is why you ask.”

  With this outright mention of Lucas specifically, my heartbeat thundered harder than ever.

  “You can’t do anything to him,” I said, the words flying out. “You can’t touch him at all. Or anyone else. They’re my friends. That’s why you have to promise.”

  “And if I agree, then you will tell him of your decision to remain here with me and that you do so of your own free will?”

  “Yes,” I forced myself to say, only pausing afterward to contemplate what his question implied. Because . . . if he needed my reassurance that I would remain, that suggested the opportunity to escape did exist, or at least that my rescue was possible.

  “You understand what will happen if you break this oath.”

  The same thing that would have happened if I’d never made it.

  “Yes.”

  “Done,” he said as he shut the violin case.

  Picking up the candelabrum, he then extended it to me.

  Stunned by his abrupt and unquestioning acceptance, I took it from him, my hand brushing his gloved one.

  The deal had been struck without haggling or negotiation. And now this must be his way of telling me that I was . . . dismissed.

  Numbed and addled by the swiftness of the exchange, I almost turned away. I caught myself, though, forcing my hand to set the candelabrum back down. Though I had gotten what I’d come for, I hadn’t gotten everything I wanted. I’d come so close to stoking an ember of his old self into flame. Perhaps it wasn’t too late—or too soon—to try again. And, if I wanted to be honest with myself, I had come armed with more than just words.

  “There is one more thing,” I said tentatively. “I want you to take off the mask. I want to talk to you without it. I want to see your face.”

  “This is my face,” he hissed as he slowly turned his head my way, revealing the skeletal profile of the shining silver mask.

  “No, it’s not,” I said, even as my heart sped up with renewed fear. “I’ve seen your true face. You yourself showed it to me.”

  “The dreams were a lie,” he snapped.

  “I’m not talking about the dreams.”

  All at once, silence supervened.

  I took a shaking breath, steeling myself for what I needed to do—something I’d already promised him I wouldn’t. But, well before that, in that dream full of roses and regret, I had also made him another promise.

  “Walls between us,

  Time and death, too.

  Heartless, our worlds divide us.

  Still, I hear you.”

  Turning from me, he tensed all over.

  In spite of my reservations, I continued with the lyrics that, just as he’d predicted, I’d memorized easily. Without even really trying to. And the melody? Well, I’d known that already.

  “Silence deafens.

  Shadows grow long.

  Yet, in the soundless nothing,

  Your name is a song.”

  He pivoted to me then, a gloved hand gripping his crimson jacket, the bloodstain glistening black in the glow of the candlelight. I took a step toward him, though, and as I did, the blood seemed to recede. His form straightened, and his eyes beamed with a sharper light.

  “Sing to me, angel.

  Sing, and I shall come.

  We’ll be but a breath apart

  Before the night is done.”

  I took another step. And then another. But then I paused, my breath stolen by his voice as, beautiful even in its distortion, it cleaved the darkness.

  “Sing to me, my love,

  Sing to me and see

  All the dark hath kept hidden

  From you and from me.”

  Compelled myself, I went to him, my voice rejoining his, ringing in perfect harmony. Working also, somehow, to drive the blood back into him the closer I came until, as I stopped to stand just before him, it vanished.

  “Walls between us,

  Time and death, too.

  Heartless, our worlds combine us.

  Still, I—”

  It had been the reflection of the firelight in his mask that had reminded me the barrier existed. My hand, rising of its own accord, took hold of the silver.

  The mask came away easily.

  Then everything went wrong.

  He swung away, lifting his cloak with one arm while the other knocked aside the candelabrum, throwing the basement into pitch-blackness. Then a gloved fist gripped the wrist of the hand that held his mask. I tightened my grasp on the cold metal, determined not to return it to him.

  He drew me to him, and helpless to resist, I went, an echo of muted, far-off pain cinching my chest as we came together. Still, I wasn’t afraid. Not even as darkness closed in on my consciousness, causing my legs to give out underneath me. Not even as, in almost the same instant, he swept me off my feet and into his arms.

  Fighting his influence, the same he’d used to lull me into a state that had allowed him to bring me here, I kept his mask in a death grip and groped for his collar with my free hand. My fingers wound in the stiff fabric, and as they did, I murmured his name. His real name.

  These actions served as my only defense against his severing of this moment I had fought so hard to win. In the end, they did not amount to enough, and my mind went where he pushed it—into the darkness of another dream, one in which he himself was nowhere to be found.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Lucas

  “You know this hotel is haunted, right?” Wes asked, slipping into Rastin’s room as soon as the medium opened the door.

  “Please,” Rastin replied, his tone wry. “Won’t you come in?”

  I wandered in next, followed by Charlotte and Patrick.

  Rastin gave us a weary and tight-lipped stare, as if hoping we’d all catch the drift that this wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he’d asked us to meet him at the Brown Hotel.

  “I see you all made a collective decision not to wait for me in the lobby as we had discussed,” grumbled Rastin. “How did you get my room number?”

  “Patrick hacked the hotel’s computer system,” Wes answered, lowering himself into an armchair with a heavy sigh.

  “Cool middle name, by the way,” Patrick said. “P.S. You don’t look thirty-eight.”

  Rastin, visibly peeved, perched on the window ledge.

  “Here,” said Charlotte, handing him a coffee cup. “We brought you some chai.”

  “How considerate,” muttered Rastin.

  “So, what’s the plan, Stan?” asked Wes.

  “The plan was for each of you to listen to me.”

  “Yeah, we did a lot of that yesterday,” I said. “I thought today was for taking action.”

  “Oh?” Rastin went to the only other chair in the room and took a seat, crossing his legs. “Then you have come to my room with a strategy in mind. Let us hear it.”

  “See,” said Patrick, “we were sort of thinking that since you’re the one harboring a fraction of the enemy’s soul, you might have the strategy.”

  “Obviously, you are not interested in my plan,” Rastin remarked before turning his attention to Charlotte. “This is very good tea. Where did you find it?”

  Charlotte shrugged and held up her own paper cup. “Heine Brothers’. It’s a local chain. Their coffee will turn your brain into a grow lamp.”

  “Mm,” said Rastin appreciatively. “I’ll have to try it.”

  “Obviously,” I said, cutting in, “the plan is to go back to the house. This time, we go in prepared to fight and to get at least one of us onto the other side. To find Stephanie . . . and bring her back.”

  “Ooh, ooh,” said Wes, sna
pping his fingers. “I’ve seen this movie. We come out of the ceiling at the end all gross and covered in ectoplasm. But we’re gonna need ropes and a small lady with a high-pitched voice.”

  “That is a very swift way for one or all of us to get killed,” said Rastin.

  Scowling, I put my hands on my hips. “So, we’re not going back in?”

  “Oh, we will go in,” said Rastin. “Two of us must, at least. And one tonight. But I would prefer to do so more covertly than your own plan suggests.”

  “You want to try going back in remotely?” I guessed. “And what exactly is that going to accomplish?”

  “If we’re lucky,” said Rastin, “a conversation with Stephanie.”

  “I’m all for catching up,” said Patrick, who leaned one shoulder against a chifforobe. “But what good is that supposed to do her or us?”

  “Stephanie can do what none of us can,” said Rastin. “At least not without forfeiting our lives.”

  “Which is?” asked Charlotte.

  “The heart,” I said, interrupting. “You want her to be the one to implant the heart.”

  “We need her to implant it,” corrected Rastin, “or else convince him to do it himself.”

  “No way,” I said.

  Rastin spread his hands. “I am ready to hear your alternate plan.”

  “I have one,” said Wes. “I call it ‘How about We Just Open Up a Door with Your Slice of Stolen Soul, Smuggle ’Er Out, and Run’ ?”

  “Emphasis on ‘run,’ ” added Patrick.

  “Not bad,” Rastin said. “If we are successful, Stephanie will be free to return to her house later, when her father is acquitted of murder.”

  To that, we all went quiet. Rastin had done his homework.

  “Fine,” I said. “Say we do things your way. Say we tell Stephanie what she needs to do and she’s somehow able to do it. Then what?”

  “Then we go get her,” he said. “So long as he has no heart to focus his soul, we have no chance of casting that soul into the hereafter. It should be clear to you by now that Stephanie can only be free when Erik is.”