The Empty Heart: A Collection

by Derek Murphy

  The Empty Heart: A Collection

  By/© Derek A. Murphy

  Table of Contents

  1…….The Empty Heart

  2…….Cost of Passage

  3…….Hammer Strokes

  4…….Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken

  5…….Like leaves of Gold

  6…….The Flume

  7…….Repetitions

  8…….If Shadows had Voices

  9…….Cold Feet

  10……The Keystone

  The Empty Heart

  ‘They’ say various things about the time just after midnight. Things like, "nothing good ever happens after midnight", or, "fell and eldritch things happen in the small hours of the night"; that sort of thing. Wade Travis thought of all the things he had heard about the ‘wee hours of the morning’ as he sipped at his cup of coffee and thought that what ‘they’ said might be true.

  His mind went back to that night nearly forty years earlier and he shivered a little remembering it. It had been a night much like tonight; spring, a light breeze outside making the limbs of the big, old trees in his yard creak, and him, sitting up by himself, lonely and maudlin. He had stayed up reading and been caught up in the story so much that when he finally lay the book down, he had been too tired to go to bed. Letting his head fall back against the back of the chair, he had pulled the lever on the chair and let it recline as fully as possible, closing his eyes.

  Half-dozing, he was only slightly aware of a figure moving into the room with him, and despite the unwonted company; there was no one else in the house, he had simply gazed on her without noting anything except that she was pretty, small and smiling. At least he thought she was pretty and smiling, her face seemed difficult to see. As she put her hands on the arms of the chair, pulling first one knee up and then the other, she shushed him when he would have spoken. Something filmy and nearly transparent covered her and she quickly pushed it out of the way, her hand going to his belt. It seemed only seconds and she held him in one hand as she supported herself with the other, making the juncture between them with little effort beyond a quick intake of breath.

  As her lips came down on his, he was conscious of something passing from him to her, their kiss as a gateway, and the sensation made him feel sad, as though he was losing something precious. Before he even knew that any time had elapsed, she was standing before him and moving away, her head turned to look at him over her shoulder as she blew him a kiss. Her eyes seemed large and dark as they blinked once and she was gone out the door leading into the kitchen. Still tired and sleepy, he let his head roll to the side and he closed his eyes again.

  When he awoke, his eyes went to the clock above the mantel and he saw that only a half hour had passed since he had finished his book. He thought of the woman he had dreamed about and smiled as his hand went to his waistband and inside his pants. He frowned when his hand encountered the wetness and with an expression of disgust, he sat up, hurrying to the bathroom. It had been quite a few years since he had a wet-dream and the sensation wasn’t any more pleasant now than it was then.

  Almost angrily opening his pants, he grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet and wetted it at the sink. As he held his manhood, he noticed a strange thing. He was damp, but not with a load of semen. Instead, there was simply what appeared to be the natural lubricant that would be encountered while making love to a woman. Without applying the wet washcloth, he brought his hand up to his nose and sniffed of the substance. A womanly scent filled his nostrils and with a shock, he realized that he had indeed, made love to a woman.

  Quickly washing the stuff from himself, he fastened his pants and hurried back into the living room. His eyes scanned everything in the room and found no trace of her. Turning, he went into the darkened kitchen and stopped in front of the rear doorway. His hand was almost trembling as he reached for the deadbolt to verify what his eyes were telling him. The door was locked and he knew that no one had a key to the lock but him. All thought of sleep was gone now and he wondered what had happened to him.

  Had he been drugged? Had someone actually been inside his house? How? If he had been drugged; he would still be asleep, wouldn’t he? Well, wouldn’t he? Wade was sure that he had done no more than doze in his chair. If that. He definitely remembered making love to the woman. The memory of the way her skin felt on his hands was still with him. He could still feel the way her nipples had felt on his tongue. The tiny creases as they crinkled with his activity, tightening up into small buds half their original size. His hands could still describe the shape and fullness of her breasts, the convenience of her hips for handholds. The smooth skin of her stomach and thighs still sang their song in his mind.

  He crossed to the fridge and removed a beer from it. Taking the opener from where it clung to the side of the box by its magnetic back, he pried the top from the bottle and drank quickly. When he lowered the bottle, half of its contents resided in his stomach and he belched a little as his other hand went to his head, ruffling his hair in stunned, wondering thought.

  * * *

  His mind found its focus again and Wade’s memories of that night so long ago began to recede back into the mental filing cabinet he had kept them locked in. He only took them out to puzzle over them every now and then and he thought that he had puzzled enough for one night. Knowing he should go to bed, but fearing to do so in case the specter of his memory came back to haunt him again, he rose from his chair, another recliner, and reached to the wool jacket he had left lying on the divan. Shrugging into it, he walked to the front door and stepped out onto the porch.

  The temperature had dropped into the fifties and a slight northerly breeze made it feel chill outside. Glancing at the car where it sat on the driveway, he almost motionlessly shook his head. Driving might occupy his mind, but it would also tend to wake him up and make getting to sleep even harder. What he needed was a walk. A long one.

  Taking the steps one at a time, he stepped down to the sidewalk and followed it to the walk at the edge of the street. He turned toward town and walked, not actually paying attention to anything in particular until he found himself an hour later downtown. It was still early enough in the season that there were few bugs flitting around the streetlights and he was able to walk under them without dodging the pests.

  The part of downtown that he found himself in was one that he rarely visited because of its reputation. A few stumble-bums either reclined on the sidewalks or held up some of the buildings with their spindly backs, paper-bag wrapped bottle in hand. Down the street, a bar was just closing and a crowd of bikers roared off in the other direction, their whoops and hollers nearly as loud as the pipes on their bikes. The giggles and screeches of their girls’ voices echoed in the near empty street as the neon light above the bar’s door flickered off. Lifting his left hand, he held his watch so that the streetlight shined on it and saw that it was five minutes past two in the morning.

  Another business between him and the bar was still open and as he watched, a biker and his ‘old lady’ staggered out the door and straddled their bike parked out front. In the dim light, he was aware of the woman leaning her head on the biker’s shoulder and apparently murmuring something to him. With a cackling laugh, the biker peeled out, nearly throwing the woman off the back of the bike before she wrapped both arms around his waist. It seemed that her hands were a bit low and he wondered if she had found a throttle to control the driver with. A chuckle rumbled deep in his throat as he resumed his walk and drew closer to the still lit shop window.

  As he drew abreast of it, he glanced within and saw a small, mature woman, tricked out like a gypsy with a voluminous skirt and peasant blouse, topped by a kerchief round her head like a
cap. Bangles hanging from the edge of the kerchief gave back the light as her head jerked toward the window and he saw her eyes follow him. Though shadowed, he saw that they were large and dark and his gaze settled on her for a moment longer than he intended. Just as he was about to turn away, she lifted a hand and one finger beckoned to him.

  Despite himself; he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, he retraced his steps and entered the shop. A sign painted on the glass informed him that he could have his fortune told within and he smiled grimly; what need had he of a fortune? What good would such a thing be to him? Every relationship he had experienced had either exploded in his face or died due to his lack of interest. Wade was a lonely man and though he had made love to many women, there had never been a lasting love that he could hold and cherish. That was something he had longed for most of his life and now that he was sixty years old, he just couldn’t see any such thing happening to him now.

  Without speaking, he walked to the back of the shop, past display cases full of the arcana associated with the Tarot, palmistry and the reading of tea leaves as well as a host of new-age stuff. The woman stood beside a small table that held a Tarot deck, a china tea service and a small candle in a plain, brass holder. The table was covered by a round, white cloth with a square, dark-red one thrown crookedly over it. As he drew ever closer, he saw that the woman was very little over five feet tall. He cocked his head to one side as it occurred to him that she seemed very familiar. Had he seen her during the day sometime in the past? Perhaps out doing her shopping, dressed in conventional clothing?

  When he reached the table, the woman gestured for him to sit in the single chair beside it and she drew a small stool close once he had settled. Waving her hand over the table, she turned her head partly away from him and watched him archly from the corners of her eyes.

  "Will you have your fortune told by the cards? Or, the tea leaves? Or, perhaps by the palm?"

  For answer, still silent, he held his right hand out, palm up. Why he did such, he didn’t know. At the back of his mind was the sense that if he drank the tea, he would be awake all night, and he had no wish to handle the cards. They were dark with age and the touch of many hands. A bad bout of flu had laid him low for the better part of two weeks that winter and he had no wish for a repeat performance. The woman seemed clean and neat in her appearance, outlandish as it was.

  Taking his hand, she scooted the stool closer until they were tête-à-tête’, nearly vis-à-vis, and drew his hand closer to her, lowering it to lie in the cradle of her lap. He immediately felt the heat of her body on the back of his hand and a thrill ran up and down his spine as she began tracing the lines in his palm with the tip of a warm finger. After a moment, she peered up at him from under her finely shaped brows and with the closer look at her face; he corrected his estimate of her age, grading it downward. As her finger continued gently moving along the creases of his palm, he couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to the somewhat generous view of her cleavage that the peasant blouse afforded and his manhood began to stir. He caught his breath in an involuntary gasp, causing the woman to glance up at him and he thought that he could see a glimmer of her white teeth bared in an outright smile for just a split second.

  Wade was no stranger to the embraces of women much younger than himself, but he had reached that point in his life when he had begun to wonder what he had to offer a young woman. The heat of her skin through the thin cloth of her skirt seemed almost to burn the back of his hand and he was on the verge of pulling it away from her when she lifted it and laid it on the table. One hand held it in place as she pointed at a position on his love-line where a small line branched off and disappeared like the estuary of a river.

  "Here, something valuable was taken from you and its lack has plagued your life ever since. Though many women have loved you, you have not loved them back. You are incapable of feeling the emotion for anybody."

  Jerking his hand back, suddenly angry, he was on the point of rising when she grasped his wrist and succeeded in pulling him back into his chair with a strength that he wouldn’t have guessed her slight frame possessed. Her eyes burned into his and he saw quite clearly that they were black, with little to delineate the border between the pupil and iris. His anger faded and he began to fear. What he feared, he didn’t know.

  She said, "The lack of love is within you, but was not caused by you. Rather, it is something which was done to you."

  His voice rasped in the back of his throat as he spoke for the first time. "How do I reclaim it?"

  The woman’s eyes widened in surprise for a moment then crinkled as she smiled at him and plunged a hand into her cleavage. She withdrew something that tinkled a little as she placed it in his palm.

  He looked down and saw a pair of rings; a large one with a smaller one so small as to fit inside the larger. They were of gold with a silver chasing around them in an arabesque that drew the eye. Looking closer, he saw that they were in some sort of script, in a language unknown to him. Even if he had known what language the script was in, it was so intricate and stylized that the individual letters were almost indecipherable.

  She said, "You must bind her with these. Never mind how. I’ll tell you what you need to know and the rest will be made clear to you when it is needful. First, you must trap her."

  With a swirl of her skirts, revealing her feet and a portion of her lower legs as she rose and walked away from him, he saw that she wore the kind of slippers that ballet dancers wore. There were no heels to add to her height and he realized that she really was very short; almost elfin in size, though the figure suggested by the bodice of her blouse and the outthrust curves of her hips in the skirt, promised to be lush and womanly. He watched her movements as she rummaged in cabinets and display cases around the room, and his manhood steadfastly refused to return to a flaccid state. The condition embarrassed him and he hoped he wouldn’t have to stand before he got it under control.

  Returning, she laid a pouch on the tabletop and he at first thought it was black velvet, but she said, "This is the scrotum of a black panther; a truly noble beast to have had one so large."

  Beside the pouch, she placed a dried bit of mummified flesh.

  "This is one of his testes, only one is sufficient. To use both would be dangerous."

  The next thing to be placed on the tabletop was a small bit of bone.

  "From his skull. The section directly behind an ear."

  A tooth joined the other things and she said, "A molar from the panther to signify the power with which he strikes."

  With a flourish, she laid a claw beside the things, its tip so fine that it seemed to disappear. "A claw to demonstrate his speed."

  She placed a small vial of clear liquid in the center of it all and placed a warm hand on his over the rings.

  "This is musk from the creature you would bind and force to return your capacity to love. Do not open it until you are ready to begin."

  Somewhat puzzled and feeling overwhelmed, Wade asked, "What do I do with all of this?"

  Settling back onto her stool, she drew his hand back to her, clasping his fingers into a fist over the rings and held it against her bosom. He could feel her heart beating wildly through the material of her blouse and the heat from her body threatened to shake his control. Struggling mightily, he shook off the urge to grasp her shoulders and pull her to him. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to crush her lips with kisses and make love to her right on this table. Her words helped him to shake off the feelings that threatened to take control of him.

  "Place everything in the pouch when you are ready to confront the creature and pour the musk in on top of it all. State that you wish to have complete control of your body and actions during your meeting and then open the pouch. Take the large ring from it and place it on your left, ring finger. Put everything else on the floor at the foot of your bed in the shape of a pentagram and lie on your bed with the small ring in your right hand. When the creature arrives, you will know the
right moment to strike; the spirit of the panther will tell you when. You must be sure to place the ring on the ring finger of her left hand."

  The woman’s instructions struck him as a mimicry of some sort of unholy wedding, but Wade knew he couldn’t continue to live without ever knowing the feeling of being completely in love with a woman. His life had just been too empty; as empty as his heart had been.

  She rose from her stool, opening his hand and placing the rings and other paraphernalia in the pouch. Gliding up close to him, her scent filled his senses with the urge to take her in that moment and he resisted it. Making love to this nameless woman would be as empty a thing as any he had experienced. He couldn’t go down that path again. This thing she had told him he must do was too important. If he became involved with her now, he would never essay this action.

  Wade felt the heat of her hand as she slid it inside his coat and slipped the closed pouch into the inner pocket next to his chest. Her eyes widened as he trembled in his efforts to resist taking her in his arms and she stepped back from him, her breast heaving as she gasped for breath. It seemed to him that she felt the same overwhelming urges that he did and he was glad that she had taken the step to put some distance between them.

  She said, "A powerful, sexual entity has laid its touch on you. In exchange for what she took from you, she left you with the power to seduce any woman, no matter her age or relationship status. This is too powerful a thing for a man to hold. It can only ruin him in the end. And that which she took from you can only have made her existence unbearable. Its sweetness will hold an attraction for her that she will be loathe to give up. You must take it from her. I don’t know if you will be strong enough to do it, but the essence of the panther will be with you; will strengthen you."

  Almost involuntarily, he stepped backward and let his momentum carry him to another step as he turned without a farewell or word of thanks to the woman. He believed that he would never see her again, believed that if he came back tomorrow, the shop would be shuttered and dark. Hesitant of purpose, he nevertheless reached the door in a few steps and was through it, taking the long walk back home in the cool darkness. The breeze was stronger now and ruffled his hair as he walked.