Dark Warm Heart

by Rich Larson

  “You said the wind felt like teeth.”

  “Like death,” Noel said.

  “The Ski-Doo broke down, so you tried to walk back to the village.”

  “Went the wrong way. They told me later.”

  “You said the mucus in your nose and the spit in your mouth were so frozen up you couldn’t breathe, and the wind was like teeth.” Kristine paused. “You said you lost your hands, then your feet. Like being disembodied. Like floating.”

  “Should’ve died,” Noel muttered. “Should’ve frozen to death.”

  “They told me that, after they took the phone away from you,” Kristine said. “I mean, it’s a miracle you’re all right.” She shrugged helplessly. “Doesn’t this feel better?” she asked. “To talk about it? Isn’t this what’s been bothering you?”

  “What else did I say?” Noel probed.

  “I don’t remember,” Kristine said. “You were fevered. You know, delirious.”

  “Did I say what I saw?” Noel’s eyes were wide. “Kristine. Tell me.”

  “Yeah. You did.” Kristine swayed, foot to foot. “You thought you saw someone else in the storm. An old man.”

  Noel shut his eyes now, breathing quick and shallow. “What did he look like?”

  “Tall,” Kristine said. “Taller than the trees. Skinny like those starving kids they show on UNICEF ads. And he was naked.” She stopped. “People see things. You know. Your brain was practically, it must have been practically shutting off.”

  “He didn’t have a face,” Noel said. “Just a big dark mouth. Big black hole. I still remember it so clear. Clearer than what actually happened.”

  “I think you might have PTSD or something, Noel. I’m worried.”

  “It’s nothing like that.” Noel’s voice was strained. He opened his eyes. Blinked. “I haven’t been myself. I know. I just need to get this transcription done, and then I’ll be done with it all. I’m looking for this one story. I know it’s in there somewhere. Just give me the week, Krissy. Be patient for me.”

  “Of course,” Kristine said. “I get it. Really.” She put her hand against Noel’s hip. It felt sharp enough to cut.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I mean.” Kristine paused. “If you need to get through this transcription so you can be done with everything, storm included, and just stop thinking about it, then yeah. I get it. And then you’ll be yourself again. I get it.”

  They embraced, and it felt like all angles. Kristine wasn’t sure, but she almost thought her hands could make out the nodes of his spine under his thin wool sweater.

  * * *

  He said he didn’t want to pass on whatever bug was in his stomach, so Noel slept in the study again. They pretended it was a sort of game, and reminded each other of the weekend Noel’s French Catholic parents had stayed with them, back during the engagement, when they’d had to rearrange all their things so it looked like they slept in separate rooms.

  On Tuesday Kristine stayed late at the school with her lesson plans, hoping she’d come back to find Noel antsy and missing her, something simmering on the stove, maybe his sketch-pad out on the coffee table or a comedy queued up on Netflix. That didn’t happen, so on Wednesday she stayed late at the school to minimize the time between arriving home and going to sleep alone. She pretended she was married to a genius, consumed by his latest work, and she was making sacrifices.

  That night, Kristine woke up cold. The shadows in her room were Baltic blue and when she nudged her phone the screen read 3:42 AM. She pulled her feet back under the sheets, coaxing a static crackle, and rolled over.

  The apartment door thunked.

  Kristine sat up, clutching her phone. Half of a dream was fogging the inside of her skull. She padded into the hallway on bare feet, navigating by the light of her screen, and felt the cold coming from the study. The door was wide open. So was the window.

  She hauled it shut with both hands, breathing an icy cloud, wondering about the pipes, how long it took for them to freeze in this weather. Snow was blowing in drifts off roofs and balconies, through the bony branches of a tree where a black garbage bag fluttered.

  Someone was in the stairwell, feet slapping the plastic-capped steps. Kristine left the study, checked the bathroom, hoping but knowing better, and then found her jacket and keys. Her inchoate dream was dancing in the back of her head. She locked the door and circled down the four flights that had made moving such an ordeal and such a triumph. She trailed her hand on the nick they’d left with the corner of their big stupid couch.

  “Noel?” she called.

  The reply was the click and catch of the exterior door opening, closing. She went quickly down the last flight, zipping her coat up to her neck. The forecast had been for an overnight drop down to minus thirty, cold enough to make metal burn. Kristine felt a thrumming under her skin as she came to the glass door. Outside, the lampposts spilled yellow pools on the lumpy ice street. A disconnected shadow was crossing the empty road, going towards the park, the playground Kristine had wanted nearby even though it had seemed too early to think about kids. She opened the door and the cold bit her hard.

  “Noel!” she shouted, feeling ice rasp her throat, freeze her nostrils. The shadow didn’t turn around. Kristine pulled up his number by muscle memory and called him as she followed. She held her phone up like a torch, listening to the soft chime, peering into the dark. There was no pick-up, but she hadn’t expected one, and now anxiety was gnawing at her stomach as she reached the park, rounded the corner of the half-painted gazebo.

  Noel was ankle-deep in the snow, back turned toward her, and he was naked. In the fluorescent light from the gazebo his skin looked wax-pale, all but translucent, bruised with cold blue shadows. Kristine’s eyes traced the cavities of his body. His spine looked sharp as scalpels. He was not shivering, not moving. Kristine was trembling all over.

  The dream was coming back to her now. She didn’t want him to turn around, because she knew what she’d see: a raw-red throat like a subway tunnel, gnashing teeth, no eyes. Her fingers were going numb at her sides.

  “Noel, this isn’t … funny,” Kristine said, halting. “You’re going to freeze to death. You’re going to get more frostbite.”

  Noel turned, and it was Noel’s face, heavy with sleep. He gave her a confused look. He looked down at his purple-scarred fingers.

  “You’re sleepwalking.” Kristine took a hesitant step, then another, crunching through the snow. “Come on. You’re going to freeze. Come on. You’re sleepwalking, like the time in Calgary. At the hotel.” She gripped his hand and tugged. He followed, stumbling slightly, red feet battered by ice. Kristine tried not to look at his ruined toenails.

  They walked slowly, slowly, snow peppering their faces and searing their lips. They passed the creaking playground with its rubber swings, the ones they’d sat in, dragging circles in the snow with their boots while they looked up at the apartment complex and invented such big beautiful dreams. She tried to picture Noel pushing a tiny body, bundled in a parka, red-cheeked, but didn’t manage it.

  The wind picked up as they crossed the road, and by the time they reached the door it felt like teeth on Kristine’s bare face.

  * * *

  In the morning, Kristine left before Noel could wake up and wonder about the bathtub full of lukewarm water, or the towels wrapped around him and under him on the couch. Kristine had played with the thermostat before and after eating breakfast, but the apartment was still cold. She needed the pool, the chlorine warmth of it, the lactic acid in her arms and shoulders. She threw up before she left.

  She dialed her mother at the yield sign.

  “Hi, honey.” The voice was faux-cheery. “Sorry, I meant to return your call yesterday, it completely slipped my mind. I was over at the Blackstocks’, you know how she talks.”

  “I don’t really remember them,” Kristine said. “I was, um, I was out walking last night, and I noticed some vacancies in the apartment down the road.”

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sp; “Oh?”

  Kristine’s nails drummed the wheel. “Well, I was wondering if you’re still thinking about that. You know, about moving. We talked about it in the summer, remember?”

  “Too cold up there. Did we talk about that?”

  “You said you wanted to be closer,” Kristine said. She bit her lip. “Grandkids?”

  “Honey, do you have news?”

  She thought about telling her for a second, imagining how her mother’s voice would turn instantly to sunshine. “No, no,” she relented. “I just meant, you know, for the future.” She could hear a disappointed breath on the other end.

  “Too cold, honey, and besides, you know I wouldn’t be able to leave this place. Not after all the work your father put into it. So much of himself, he put into it. It just wouldn’t feel right.”

  “I thought you said the upkeep…?”

  “I can manage, honey. I’m sturdy. Besides, you don’t need your mother hassling you all the time. You and Noel have each other now. It’s normal to be, I don’t know, to be overwhelmed a little at first, trying to make it as a young couple, especially with him doing the doctorate. But I know you can make it work. You’re a good girl.”

  An SUV honked from behind and Kristine realized she hadn’t moved from the yield sign. She pulled away, ending the call without saying good-bye, and wiped at her stinging eyes.

  * * *

  When she got home from the school she went straight to the study, rumpled card clutched in her palm. She could hear the laptop hum from under the door. She opened without knocking.

  “I made you an appointment,” Kristine said. “With this counselor. It’s through the university.”

  Noel glanced up. His face was still swallowed between headphones and his eyes were strangely cloudy. He tapped something out on the keyboard.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about last night?” Kristine said softly.

  Noel said nothing. The window was shut, but he was shirtless. His collarbones had grown a new geometry, skimming up like shark fins. Sweat was beaded under his hairline.

  “You sleepwalked out into the park,” Kristine said. “It was fucking forty below. You could have died.”

  Noel gave a fractional shrug. His eyes returned to the screen, and Kristine could tell from the swipe of his finger that the volume was going up.

  “I wish you had cheated on me,” she said.

  Noel tapped his headphone to show he couldn’t hear. His smile was too broad, too many teeth, a Cheshire cat grin.

  “I wish I’d cheated,” Kristine said, feeling a tingle up and down her back, something cold and angular in her gut.

  Noel said nothing.

  Kristine dropped the appointment card and left.

  * * *

  The next day she spent lunch-hour talking in circles with the health center. They mumbled at her about seasonal depression, flu virus. When it came time to teach ecosystems she begged someone out of the staff-room to watch her class watch YouTube clips about photovores and herbivores and carnivores. She went to the bathroom and speed-read through Wikipedia articles and WebMD links. She tried to throw up. A few people asked her if she was all right, and she nearly told them.

  When she got home, the apartment was empty and Noel’s shoes were not in the closet. It seemed like the thermostat had finally kicked in, because she didn’t get goose bumps when she shrugged off her coat. Kristine hunted the bare counters for a note for a good five minutes before she gave up and put some Thai in the microwave.

  Maybe he’d finished the transcription. Maybe if she went to the bathroom she’d find bristles in the sink, and then he’d be arriving back with clean-shaven cheeks, a bottle of white wine, take-out from the Mediterranean place they’d loved so much that first month after moving in. She would tell him she had news; he would already know. For a moment the image was so clear that Kristine nearly stopped the microwave and put the leftovers back into the fridge.

  Instead, she went to the study. The door was wide open again, but the window was shut. Noel hadn’t taken the laptop with him. Kristine hesitated for a moment, then plucked it off the desk and sat down on the hide-a-bed with it. Her hand kneaded the sheets while it booted up. The password screen appeared, and Kristine put in her name, clacked the enter key. The affirmative chime made her almost smile.

  The transcription window was already waiting, a block of IPA symbols. Kristine tried to remember the phonetics classes she’d taken; most of the sounds she’d already forgotten. One word seemed to be recurring: wεηdəgoʊ. She pulled up the next window, and saw that Noel had translated a section into English. At the top it was labeled audio48.mp3. Kristine clicked back to the sound files and pulled the headphones up over her ears. She started to read.

  the wendigo is hunger, and hunger is the wendigo. a man travelled by night. he hunted the herd. the wendigo hunted the man. a man travelled by night and through the wood, and the [blizzard] snow drove him off his trail. the wendigo hunted the man, its arms were the cold and its teeth were the wind. a man had death inside [in stomach]. the cold kills, the hunger kills. hunger is the wendigo. a man lies down in the snow. his body is given to the ice. a man travelled alone. the wendigo came to him with [singing] open mouth. the wendigo has jaws as icicles. the wendigo gives to the man a dark warm heart of human meat. a man can die, or a man can eat. a man travelled by night. he ate the wendigo’s [offering]. the man lives, the hunger stays. hunger is the wendigo. a man travelled by night,

  “Krissy?”

  She flung upright, all her nerves sparked at once; Noel was inches away and his eyes were black as jet. The laptop crashed to the floor between them, Kristine’s heart hammered in her throat. His face was gaunt, stretched thin, canvas over bones.

  “Why did you write that?” Kristine whispered.

  “I didn’t,” Noel said. The glass Pyrex pan from the microwave was clutched in his one hand. He held it out between them, arm shaking slightly.

  “Bullshit you didn’t. What do you mean? What do you mean you didn’t write it?” Kristine stepped back and felt the cold edge of the hide-a-bed against the bends of her knees. Noel’s pale face was slick with sweat.

  “I translated it,” he said, voice wavering. “It was already there. I knew it was there. I just had to find it. Those old men had so many stories.” He held the Pyrex out again, still shaking, and Kristine took it so it wouldn’t fall.

  “Why are you doing this?” Kristine demanded. The glass was cold again. “Why are you fucking inventing this?”

  “I’m not,” Noel pleaded. “Krissy. Look.”

  And she had to. He held up his spidery hand, so much more bone than she remembered it, wrists like doorknobs, and planted his teeth in the webbing between thumb and finger. With a wet tearing sound, he sheared through the flesh. Kristine’s lungs caught, she anticipated the spray of bright red blood, but there was nothing. Something thick and black glistened along the torn skin, and then suddenly the hand was back together again.

  “It can’t be me,” Noel said. “I tried.”

  “Oh, my God, Noel.”

  His face contorted all at once and he lunged, his teeth suddenly canine; Kristine swung the glass dish in the same motion. It slammed against his temple with a thick crack: Noel was reeling off to the side, cursing in French, and Kristine was pushing past him, slamming the door, throwing herself against it. Her breath came in a wail. Noel’s body thumped against the door once, then twice, Kristine shoved back with her shoulders, and then he stopped.

  “We’re going to call emergency,” Kristine said, when her heart was beating again. “I’m dialing 911. There’s something, I don’t know, some disease you picked up up there. I know this isn’t you. I know it can’t be you.” She couldn’t keep her voice steady, it slipped away from her between words.

  “Oh, fuck,” came Noel’s voice, raw. “Oh, fuck. I drove to the university hospital. That’s where I was. Jacob. You remember Jacob. The med-student. He told me how they keep cadavers. I thought, maybe, I
don’t know. I couldn’t get in. They called security.”

  “This can’t be real, Noel.”

  He went on like he hadn’t heard. “Then I thought, the morgue, maybe. Or, I don’t know.” He gave a broken laugh. “A graveyard. Maybe that. I have to know. I just have to. I’m going to die soon. If I don’t eat, I’m going to die.”

  Kristine was muffling a sob in her hand, biting down as hard as she could. “A doctor,” she gasped.

  “This can’t be for doctors. When you’re wendigo, you’re wendigo. Until you give in. That was what they said.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know.” He stopped. “There are more stories. More transcriptions. Maybe if I keep going, keep looking. I don’t know.”

  Kristine didn’t reply. She sat against the door, tears sticky on her cheeks, and waited for hours. Waited for Noel’s breathing to turn regular, shallow but regular, so she was sure he was asleep. She moved the bookcase in front of the study door, groaning and scraping. It was heavy. Her hands came away with deep red welts.

  * * *

  She was up early the next morning, wiping down the kitchen counters and stovetop with Purell so everything gleamed. When she popped the ice cubes out of their tray they skittered off the table and onto the floor. Her hands were shivering as she dropped them one by one into a plastic bag. She set her wedding ring on the counter and dialed her mother.

  “Hey, honey, what’s up?”

  “Call me my name?” Kristine’s voice came in a sob; she tamped it down.

  “What’s wrong, Kristine?”

  “It’s nothing,” Kristine said, toying with the ring. “I just remembered, that cousin you had, the farmer. He lost his hand in a thresher. He just wore it on the other finger, right? His wedding ring, I mean. He wore it on the right.”

  “That’s right, yes. On the right. I think that might be how they do it in Europe, too.”

  “Okay.” Kristine packed more ice around her left ring finger, waiting for the numb. “I was just remembering that.” She went to the counter, to the shiny Cutco knives, another wedding gift. She tried to remember the sharpest one.