Hollow Chest

by Brita Sandstrom

  He was almost to the corner when he heard an urgent yowl and looked back to find Biscuits standing at the edge of a slush puddle like a marooned sailor. Charlie sighed. Bringing Biscuits into a flock of pigeons didn’t seem wise, but she had that look that meant she would just magic herself outside again if he put her back inside the house.

  “I don’t think Mellie will be thrilled to see you,” he warned her. Tucking the thermos under his arm, Charlie rescued her from the snow and carried her to safety. She insisted on being escorted the rest of the way to Mellie’s bench, where he set her down on the cobblestones.

  “Behave,” he said, pointing at her with the thermos. “These are friend pigeons, not eating pigeons.”

  As if to test her sincerity, a pigeon—Pudge, Charlie could tell, from his dragging wing—waddled in front of Biscuits and cooed. Biscuits turned her back on both Charlie and the pigeon and stared with great intensity at a light post.

  “Tell your beast that if she gets any bright ideas I’ll dunk her in holy water, see if she dissolves.”

  For someone so distinctive, Mellie was surprisingly good at sneaking up on people. Biscuits flicked an ear backwards but otherwise ignored them both.

  “G’morning, Mellie,” Charlie said around a yawn that he covered with a lobster-claw mitten. He proffered the thermos to her. “I brought tea.”

  Mellie squinted at him from under the edge of her droopy hat. “You’ll be wanting something, I suppose.”

  Charlie’s face got hot despite the cold, but he kept his head up. “Yes, but that’s not why I brought tea.”

  “Why did you bring it, then?”

  “Because it’s cold out, and it’s breakfast.”

  Mellie stuck out her chin and squinted at him again, a lot longer this time. Then she snatched the thermos out of his hand and led him over to the ground in front of her bench, where she spread out a musty-smelling blanket for them to sit on.

  Charlie took the thermos back and poured some tea (overly strong, maybe, now that he smelled it) into the lid that doubled as a cup.

  “Cup or thermos?” he asked, holding them out.

  “Cup, I’m not a barbarian,” said Mellie, holding the lid in one gnarled hand, with her littlest finger sticking out.

  Charlie didn’t mind being a barbarian, so he slurped some hot tea out of the thermos. Steam drifted in lazy curls around their faces as they sipped, the street still waking up around them. The pigeons were puffed up against the cold and huddled together in feathery clumps. Biscuits continued her observance of the light post, disdain dripping from each whisker.

  “So,” Mellie said at last, setting down her cup (Charlie refilled it for her with what was left in the thermos), “what did you need from a mad old woman, boy?”

  Charlie glanced around for anyone nearby, and then again for any eyes that were gleaming in places they shouldn’t have been. He licked his lips. He should have brought more tea.

  “I don’t really know. I just—I don’t really have anyone else to talk to. About my brother. I used to talk to Sean—you know Sean O’Leary, he’s got freckles and he’s always wearing that funny hat? But Sean’s brothers died in the war and now he won’t talk to me about Theo, or anything about the war, really. He just pretends like he hasn’t heard me. And I’ve been seeing all sorts of strange things . . . I feel a bit like I’m going mad—”

  “And you reckoned you’d go straight to the expert, eh?”

  “No, that’s not— Well, I don’t know. Sort of. I guess . . . You see things differently to other people. And lately it feels like I am, too.”

  “What have you been seeing, Charlie Merriweather?” Mellie grabbed his arm in one bony hand, her eyes gleaming almost like a cat’s.

  “Nothing,” he said, trying to jerk his arm out of her grip, but her fingers were tight as iron around the creaking bones of his arm. “Nothing, that’s not what I meant.” But when she refused to let go, he admitted, “I’m just imagining things, that’s all, I haven’t been sleeping well—”

  “What have you been seeing?” Her voice came out in a hiss, and she yanked him close enough that he could see each of her bared gray teeth.

  “I thought I saw a wolf,” he said. “It’s probably just some dog that lives in the neighborhood, I’ve been seeing it at night, hearing it howl. . . . But every time I see it, I keep thinking it’s something else. And in bed at night, I keep thinking I hear the air raid sirens, but of course I don’t and . . . I just feel like I’m losing track of what’s real.”

  Mellie dropped his arm as if he’d burned her. “You get away,” she said, scrambling to yank her tatty blanket off him and scuttle across the bench to her pram. “You forget them, do you hear me? You forget them and you forget me. They’ve gotten a whiff of you now and they won’t stop, not till they’ve eaten it, and they won’t get mine, too. They won’t. They tried before, and I won’t let them get close again, not ever.”

  “Mellie!” Charlie said in a yelp, and made a grab for her sleeve.

  “Get away!”

  The pigeons startled up like a dust cloud, wings flapping at his hands and face so hard he had to curl up with his hands over his head until they swooped away, quick as a school of fish.

  That’s why they call her Mad Mellie, he reassured himself. She sees things that aren’t real. This is what I get for trying to talk to her. Charlie sat up on the blanket; the gray buildings loomed up on either side of him, as if the whole street was about to collapse in on itself. But she isn’t mad, is she? He had seen that for himself.

  He scooped Biscuits up and stuck his face in her soft fur, breathing in her familiar animal smell until he was brave enough to set her down and stand up. Mellie was gathering up her things in a frenzy, tossing blankets in her pram in preparation of fleeing.

  “Mellie,” he said, stepping forward to touch her elbow, very gently, with one hand. “Mellie, please.”

  Her whole body seemed to collapse in on itself, her already hunched shoulders sagging towards her ribs.

  “I suppose there’s no point now, is there? In trying to protect you from them. They’ve got your scent now.”

  “Who does?”

  “The wolves, boy. The war wolves. They’ve been eating hearts longer than you or I’ve been alive. They’re professionals, connoisseurs.”

  “The war . . . wolves?”

  Mellie nodded, her eyes terrified and enormous. “Enormous wolves, wolves the size of bears—horses, even. The others said they couldn’t see them, but I knew they could. They just didn’t want to see them, so they told themselves the wolves were something else—hunger, thirst, hallucinations. But they’re real and I saw them. And when I didn’t see them, I heard them, snuffling around, chewing things up and spitting them out. But I was vigilant.”

  At that, Mellie poked Charlie hard in the chest, right where his heart was thump thud-ing against the cobblestones of his ribs, like soldiers’ boots stamping in parade formation. Thump-THUD. Thump-THUD. “Constant vigilance is the only way to keep your heart safe, you remember that, boy.”

  “What do you mean, keep my heart safe? What do they want with my heart?”

  “The less you know about them, the better,” Mellie said.

  “Hollow Chest,” Charlie whispered. Grandpa’s words, the empty sound in Theo’s chest when Charlie met him at the train station . . . “That’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s when they take your heart. They did it to Theo, I know it. That’s why he hasn’t been the same—that’s why he won’t get better. He can’t get better, can he? Not if his heart was taken—”

  “Not taken, boy. Eaten. Consumed. Where else would they put it? Have you ever seen a wolf with pockets? Of course not. Only prey animals have pockets; predators have teeth and gullets.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know that it’s—that it’s gone entirely—”

  “It is gone. Complete and entire. When you eat an apple, do you just take a bite and leave the rest on the tree? No. There’s no cure, there’s no co
ming back. All you can do now is guard your heart and let him go.”

  “I can’t do that. He promised that—that he’d—”

  “Promises don’t survive a wolf’s teeth any more than hearts do. Let him go.”

  “But you don’t know it’s Hollow Chest,” he insisted. “It could be anything, he’s just tired, he’s not himself. He was hurt by the—by the shrapnel, he has these nightmares, it would be too much for anyone. It could be any of those things.” Charlie was babbling, the words tripping over themselves in his mouth; his hands were shaking where he kept shoving them into his hair and yanking them back out. His scalp was starting to ache.

  “If it was any of those things, you wouldn’t be here asking,” Mellie replied, unmoved. “You wouldn’t be seeing them.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense—” He broke off again, pacing back and forth in front of Mellie’s bench, sending pigeons scattering. He couldn’t see straight. He couldn’t think. “What does it mean, though, a missing heart?” he asked, spinning back to Mellie. “You’d be dead without a heart, you couldn’t live without it.”

  “That’s the point, lad, keep up,” Mellie snapped. “That’s not living, is it? Spend so much time without your heart, you become cut off from everyone. Being so alone, it’s not—” Mellie broke off, and rubbed her gnarled, knobby hands over her face, smearing around some dirt across one cheek. But when she looked up, her eyes were as clear and as focused as he had ever seen them, gleaming like cut glass in the light. “Charlie,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “let him go. It’s the only way you can still save yourself. Let him go.”

  Charlie wrenched his hand out of her grasp, so hard he went reeling back out into the street.

  “You don’t know anything!” he shouted. “You’re just a mad old woman making up stories.” Charlie yanked Biscuits up off the ground and ran back towards home, tears blurring in his eyes.

  Mellie didn’t say anything. She didn’t chase after him. It was as if she’d been expecting him to leave her.

  Charlie kept his eyes locked on the street ahead of him all the way home. He did not see any dogs, any wolves. He did not see anything except the same cobblestones and bricks he saw every day. He did not see anything except the same city that had always been there.

  But then again, whole chunks of that city were gone, whole chunks of families, of people’s bodies, of hearts—

  No. Don’t think about it.

  When he got home, he did not watch his brother out of the corner of his eye. He did not wonder if Theo’s chest was hollowed out, the heart digesting in a monster’s belly. He did not put his hand to his own chest and feel the thumping muscle there and wonder if it felt the way it should, or if he would feel the same thing if he touched Theo’s chest.

  When he lay awake in the darkness of his room, it was not because he was afraid to turn on a light and let anything lurking in the darkness know he was there. When he got up around midnight, it was only to get a glass of water, not to check the street for too-bright eyes and the clicking of claws on cement.

  Voices downstairs stopped Charlie on the landing, and he ducked down just out of the edge of the light cast by the dying fire. The shadows and the stairs hid him from view.

  “He’s my son, Dad. I’m not sending him away when he needs me the most.”

  “Bethy, listen to me. He is not safe. We love Theo. We know it and he knows it. But what if I hadn’t been there last night?”

  “But you were there—”

  “But I won’t always be, Bethy. Those dreams are going to outlive me, love. I’m an old man, and getting older by the day. Even if I’m around, I may not be in a fit state to help for too much longer. You have to consider all your options, Bethy.”

  Charlie could not remember a time without Grandpa Fitz. He could not imagine a world that didn’t shift to fit his shape. Charlie squeezed the webbing of flesh between his thumb and forefinger until it stung and he could breathe right again.

  Mum made a strange sound somewhere between a sigh and a quiet sob. Then she gave a choked-off huff of laughter. “I suppose I could always take Stuart Cleaver up on his offer.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “But it’s the truth. I thought we could get by until Theo came home, but if he loses his job, or if he needs to go away to . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Listen to me, love. What if it’s Charlie who wakes him up next time?”

  “I’m not discussing this any more tonight.”

  “Bethy, please—”

  There was a scraping sound as Mum pushed her chair back from the table, and he could hear her pacing circling closer to the stairs. Charlie crab-crawled as fast as he dared back into the hall and then sneaked back into his room. He heard the doors to their rooms click shut, first Mum’s, then Grandpa Fitz’s.

  His head knocked against his door with a soft thump.

  Hollow Chest, he thought, pressing his hand against his own chest where his heart beat a steady thud against his palm. War wolves.

  If Theo had it, Hollow Chest, if a war wolf had eaten his heart, he would never get better. How could he? Hearts couldn’t grow back. Could they? No, no more than Grandpa Fitz’s arm could grow back. If something was gone, the only way to fix it was to get it back—

  But how could he?

  He thought of what he’d seen outside the hospital, and at that moment, it was as if the memory finally slipped into focus. He remembered the wolf. The great hulking shape of it, and how it had smelled strongly, not of dog or of anything he could put his finger on, really, but something distinct. There was no mistaking that smell for something else. Charlie had an odd feeling that he would remember that smell until the day he died. And he remembered the sound of its snickering laugh, and the eyes of the soldier as he held his finger to his lips.

  Don’t let it know you see it.

  But maybe that was exactly what he needed to do. Mellie said the wolves—that’s what she had called them, war wolves—had his scent now, that they could find him anywhere. But maybe he could find them, too. He could see them now, and he knew with sudden certainty that he would never forget them again, or mistake them for something else. He knew that trick now.

  The stray dog, always howling. The soldier in the hospital, Reggie, his black eyes going wide with terror. The bearskin soldier, weeping in the woods and spilling blood from his hand so someone would come find him. An idea began to form in Charlie’s mind. It wasn’t a plan by any stretch of the imagination. More of an experiment. Just a test, to see if it would work.

  He didn’t get back into bed. Instead, he pulled on his warmest clothes and two pairs of socks and sat down to wait. He waited a long time.

  But finally, maybe an hour later, maybe more, the entire house had gone quiet. His stocking feet were silent on the floorboards as he made his way down the hall.

  Light was seeping from the space under Theo’s door as he crept past. Charlie paused for a moment, but kept walking.

  Boots, hat, mittens, Sunday jacket all went on over his clothes. He was just easing open the door when a sound from behind him made him spin around, frozen.

  Biscuits shook herself loose from the shadows and made another soft mew.

  “You shouldn’t come,” Charlie whispered, the dark room heavy with silence all around him. “It might not be safe.”

  Biscuits mewed again, louder this time, the threat plain in her voice.

  “Fine, fine, shh.” He held the door open for her and she dashed between his ankles and out the door. He closed the door as soft as he could behind them and together they went out into the cold night and all its hungry shadows.

  14

  CHARLIE WASN’T SURE HOW THIS WAS SUPPOSED to be done, but he started walking in the direction of the hospital, where he’d first seen the wolf. His path took him down a long, thin alley that smelled of smoke and something less nice. It was very dark—neither streetlamp nor moonlight could peek over the high walls that loomed up on either si
de of him.

  When he finally emerged from the tunnel-like alley, he was in a small clearing between several buildings, with more alleys leading away in all directions like spokes on a wheel. He turned around in a slow circle three times, looking for a hint about where to go next until he made himself dizzy and had to sit down on the cold ground for a moment.

  Biscuits chittered a reproach at him and then butted her head up against his chin. He clutched her warm little cat body close to him, shivering in the night air.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said into her coat. He hoped he wasn’t telling a lie.

  When the alleys stopped spinning around him, he stood up on shaky legs. Maybe no one else could see the wolves, but the wolves could see him. And if they could see him, then they could hear him, too.

  “War wolves?” His voice was thin and small and he coughed until he felt a bit braver. “War wolves! I know you’re there.” He did not, in fact, know they were there, but pretending to know what he was doing seemed like the best way to muscle past his own fear. Mum had said that sometimes you needed to pretend to feel something until you could feel it for real. Charlie could pretend to be brave. “I need to talk to you.”

  Nothing happened. Charlie’s breath puffed out in the air and Biscuits paced fidgeting circles around him. Charlie had anticipated this. In Mum’s stories, one could never just summon the person or thing they really needed to talk to. You always had to give something to get something, which seemed fair enough.

  Mum had pinned a tiny scrap of white fabric to the inside collars of his jacket that had his name and address written on it, in case he or the jacket ever got lost. Carefully, his fingers clumsy with cold, he unpinned the little note and let it fall to the ground, where a breeze swiftly bore it away.