The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart

by Lauren DeStefano

  Marybeth did as she was told. And then Mrs. Mannerd was steering her outside and saying something about new gloves.

  Lionel rushed to the window and watched them get into the car. Only it wasn’t a car. It was a giant beast with teeth, about to swallow them whole.

  Just as Mrs. Mannerd adjusted the mirror and prepared to back down the driveway, Marybeth opened her door. Quick as a blur she ran back to the house. The screen door slammed against its frame, and before Lionel could move, she had thrown her arms around him.

  She kissed his cheek.

  He was too stunned to move. And by the time he thought to put his arms around her, she was already gone. Through the window he saw her run back to the car.

  He had smelled the cold in her hair. He had felt her human heart beating against his chest.

  CHAPTER

  14

  It was a gray morning. The sort of day that felt like the whole earth had gotten caught inside a storm cloud and the rain would be along any minute.

  The blue creature was deep asleep, but Marybeth could feel slight reverberations in her chest, as though it was snoring.

  You’ve gotten me into this mess, she thought. They had been in the car for more than an hour, and Marybeth didn’t know if she would ever see the little red house again. Mrs. Mannerd had called today a tour, but she had also packed some things for Marybeth in a hatbox. It slid across the backseat every time the car hugged a curve in the road.

  Marybeth didn’t talk. She was afraid that her voice would wake the blue creature, but she also didn’t have anything to say. What could she possibly say?

  It had been a while since they’d passed any buildings. The trees were all barren. There were no stores. No other cars. The road was overrun with roots.

  Mrs. Mannerd gripped the steering wheel. She was a statue of a woman, Marybeth had always thought. Not sentimental or emotional or easy to rattle. Not like her jittery, chatty sister Ms. Gillingham had been. But even Mrs. Mannerd was starting to come undone because of this blue creature, and she didn’t even know that the thing existed.

  This drive was for the best, Marybeth told herself. It was best for everyone that she was someplace where she couldn’t hurt them. To comfort herself she imagined that there would be a garden at this new place, that she could spend her days outside with the sunlight beating down on the part of her hair.

  Mrs. Mannerd fidgeted with the map that was resting on the seat beside her. She glanced at it and then at the road. “It should be the next turn,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

  Marybeth gripped her skirt in her fists and willed the blue creature to remain asleep.

  The car turned down a road made up mostly of dirt, with some bits of gravel to indicate it had once been cared for. The trees around the road were hunched over, so low that their branches scratched the windows as they drove past.

  Mrs. Mannerd cleared her throat.

  “Marybeth,” she said, “I want you to know that I’ve always—that is, I care about your well-being, and this isn’t a punishment. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Marybeth said. She did understand; Mrs. Mannerd was only doing what adults did. She and Lionel had tried to fix this, and they had failed.

  Mrs. Mannerd stopped the car. She didn’t bother to pull off to the shoulder. It didn’t seem as though anyone else would be coming up the road anyway.

  Mrs. Mannerd turned to face her. “Before we go on, isn’t there anything you’d like to say?”

  “Like what?” Marybeth asked. She was staring at her lap, and she glanced uneasily at Mrs. Mannerd.

  “Like about the morning that you were missing,” Mrs. Mannerd said. She was trying to be patient, and she said her words slowly. “You walked all that way down the road. You must have been thinking something. And all those other times you wandered off.”

  Marybeth looked through the windshield. She could not see the building that awaited them farther up the road, but she could sense it. She was so very far away from anything she had ever known, and there could be no turning around. She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried not to cry.

  “Marybeth?”

  “I don’t remember,” Marybeth whispered.

  “I’ve had plenty of children who were fibbers,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “Enough to tell you that you’ve never been very good at it.”

  Marybeth only gripped at her skirt. She did want to tell the truth, but it wouldn’t have helped any. There was no adult on earth who would believe her about the blue creature. Probably this place where she was going was filled with people who had secrets they kept to themselves because no one would believe them.

  Eventually, Mrs. Mannerd started driving again.

  In the little red house, Lionel was getting increasingly restless. For more than an hour he sat at the dining room table, pretending to care about long division as the tutor droned on.

  Normally, Mrs. Mannerd would not leave him alone with the tutor. She said that his antics would give the poor woman an ulcer. But today she needed his cooperation, she said, and begged him to behave like a normal boy. Behaving like a boy meant he had to be treated like one. And today especially, he had more important matters to tend to.

  He couldn’t very well just run out the door. The tutor would chase after him, and even if she didn’t catch him, she would see where he had gone and call the police.

  No. He would have to choose stealth over speed.

  He forced himself to cough, and then again, and then again.

  The tutor set down her pencil, which she had been using to go over his answers, and she felt his forehead. “What’s the matter?” she said. “Are you feeling sick?”

  Lionel did his best to look pitiful, and he sniffled and coughed again. “Only a little,” he said feebly. “My throat is scratchy.”

  “Oh, dear,” the tutor said. “Is there any medicine in the house? Should I call the doctor?”

  “Mrs. Mannerd usually makes a cup of tea for us when we cough,” Lionel said. “With honey.”

  The tutor stood. “You just sit right there, then, and I’ll be back with some tea.”

  Lionel forced his sweetest, most innocent of smiles. His cheeks ached, but the tutor didn’t notice. She patted his head and walked into the kitchen. “Where does Mrs. Mannerd keep the honey?”

  “In the cabinet above the stove,” Lionel said, already sneaking for the door. This ought to buy him at least a minute or two; there was no honey in the cabinet. One of the older ones had asked for it and Mrs. Mannerd had said that she was not made of money and then she’d gone into a lecture about the cost of things.

  For once, Lionel ran outside without slamming the door behind him. He closed it quietly, and darted behind the hedges that bordered the driveway, so that he could make it to the road without being seen.

  In his haste, he had even remembered to grab his coat. He was quite proud of himself for remembering, but he also felt restricted by the weight of that thick wool.

  Once he reached the road, he became a jungle cat, covering several yards in a second. He would have to be quicker than a little boy could be.

  He didn’t know how long it took him to get to the farmhouse. Time no longer mattered. The tutor surely knew that he was gone by now, but that didn’t matter because Mrs. Mannerd wouldn’t be home for hours.

  He snuck past the house and into the barn. It was, after all, the place the blue creature kept returning to. Whatever he was looking for, whatever it would take to save Marybeth, it had to be here.

  Along the wall, beside old dingy bales of hay, there were some tools that looked as though they hadn’t been used in years, rusty and huddled together, sharing a dress made of cobwebs.

  The barn still appeared to be in good condition. Lionel had noticed this before. There was no reason for it to be abandoned, and yet it was. There was something hiding here. Lionel was sure of that. Something the blue creature had tried to use Marybeth to dig up. And now Marybeth was gone, and it was up to him.

&n
bsp; He reached through the cobwebs for the shovel.

  The building came into view. It was very old. It was made up of stone the color of pale skin, and its windows were murky black eyes. Some crumbling black steps led up to a yawning mouth.

  There was no sign. There was only a rusted brass number on the door: 762.

  If Lionel were here, he would not allow them to step inside. He would say this building was going to chew them to death in its fangs.

  Or maybe, Marybeth thought, she was finally starting to see things the way that he did.

  If Mrs. Mannerd had reservations, she didn’t let on. She shut off the engine and came around to Marybeth’s door and opened it for her. Mrs. Mannerd took Marybeth’s hand in one of her own hands and gripped the frayed cord of the hatbox in the other.

  Marybeth swallowed her fear, a task that was growing increasingly difficult, and allowed Mrs. Mannerd to lead her up the steps.

  It was silent here, and for a hopeful moment, Marybeth thought they had arrived at the wrong place. Taken a wrong turn somewhere and wound up at an abandoned mansion filled with nothing but mice and faded possessions that once belonged to the living.

  Mrs. Mannerd knocked on the door, and the sound of those three firm knocks echoed within the building like they were trying to escape.

  The blue creature stirred within Marybeth’s stomach. It awoke slowly, but once it was conscious, it was strong.

  Marybeth stepped back, tried to jerk her hand out of Mrs. Mannerd’s, but Mrs. Mannerd was holding on tight.

  “Marybeth, what is it?” she said.

  Marybeth’s eyes were blue, and Mrs. Mannerd blinked several times, sure it was a trick of the light that peeked through the clouds. But Marybeth’s eyes stayed blue. Even her cheeks were an odd shade of bluish gray, and the roots of her braids as well, as though some peculiar ink was oozing out of her scalp.

  It wasn’t just the color of Marybeth’s eyes. It was the look in them. Mrs. Mannerd could swear that she was looking at a stranger.

  The door swung open.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Lionel dug with more strength than a boy his size ought to possess. His arms were aching, and yet he did not relent.

  Time and again, the blue creature had brought Marybeth to this barn, and always it came to rest in the same spot, beneath the hay.

  The dirt was hard and nearly frozen, and Lionel’s greatest effort brought little result, but still he dug. He knew that whatever the blue creature wanted, it was here. He would find it and bring it to the blue creature, and maybe then it would let Marybeth go. It had to.

  Lionel did not know exactly where Mrs. Mannerd was taking Marybeth, but he could imagine. Before he came to the little red house, he had been brought to another place. A darker, colder house filled with broken boys and broken girls. Their bones were intact, but something within them had been damaged. Some of them screamed, or hid under beds, or bit the hands that brought them their dinner.

  Lionel knew that he was nothing like them, but he had nowhere else to go. That is, until Ms. Gillingham arrived one bright summer afternoon, holding her purse before her stomach and smelling of perfume. She had a round belly, the roundest Lionel had ever seen, and her smile was big to match it.

  She inspected each of the children without flinching, without wrinkling her nose at the smell of them. She said “hello” even if they did not look at her.

  Later, Lionel would learn that Ms. Gillingham did this often. She went to homes for broken children and looked for one or two that might be salvaged yet.

  Why she chose Lionel was anyone’s guess. She’d found him hiding under the kitchen sink, and it was only with infinite patience that she had gotten him to tell her his name. And after he was brought to the little red house, he’d screamed when they tried to put him in the bathtub.

  Marybeth was his opposite, Lionel knew. She didn’t belong in a home for broken children. She was too good, too hopeful. If Mrs. Mannerd left her in that place, she would die.

  It had been nearly an hour now, and he was making some progress with the dirt. He had dug a hole that went past his ankles now. Something was here, and with each jab of the shovel, he braced himself for whatever it was. Surely it was something terrible. Nothing good was ever buried that didn’t grow.

  Lionel knew a great lot about terrible things, though he never spoke about them. Not even to Marybeth. Especially not to her. He didn’t want her to ever know the things he had seen.

  The scream was not Marybeth’s, though it came from her mouth.

  “Please!” Mrs. Mannerd said. She had dropped the hatbox now, and was holding on to Marybeth’s wrist with both hands to keep her from escaping.

  Marybeth’s head shook wildly, and she screamed and screamed in a way Mrs. Mannerd had never seen in all her years minding children. That was how she knew that this rabid creature was no little girl. Something had overtaken Marybeth, and the way she was carrying on, Mrs. Mannerd would have believed it was the devil himself.

  Women came running from the open door like a fleet of ghosts. Strong ghosts, who took Marybeth by the arms and legs and carried her inside, all as she thrashed and screamed that awful scream.

  With shaking hands, Mrs. Mannerd picked up the hatbox filled with the things she had packed for Marybeth. She fought every instinct to retrieve Marybeth from the nurses who were carrying her away. She was out of sight now, swallowed up by the mint-green hallway that led into the house’s belly, but her screams still echoed.

  They’re going to help her, Mrs. Mannerd told herself. This will be for the best.

  “Come on in,” a soft voice said, and Mrs. Mannerd looked into the face of an old woman undeterred by the chaos. “I’m Delores. We spoke on the telephone. I’ve been expecting you both.”

  Mrs. Mannerd had seen all sorts of places in her lifetime. Happy places and sad places. Some rich places, mostly poor places. She had seen funeral homes and hospitals. But she had never seen a place like this.

  The floor was made of old marble tile, and some of the tiles were cracked and chipped. In the entryway there was a wide staircase with a faded yellow carpet that was shredded and frayed.

  Delores led Mrs. Mannerd down a long hallway. It had bright peach walls that glowed in the gloomy light. At the end of the hallway was an office with overstuffed leather chairs, so shiny and polished they looked like they were wet. There was also a large desk with nothing on it but a lamp, a pad, and a row of sharpened pencils.

  “Please do have a seat,” Delores said, as she sat behind her desk. “I’m glad you were able to make it out here. I assume the girl is Mary?”

  “Marybeth,” Mrs. Mannerd said, and her hands began to tremble at the name. She hadn’t known what to expect when she brought Marybeth out here, but she hadn’t expected such a fit. “She’s normally such a calm girl. She’s always been one of my quiet ones.”

  Delores smiled. She didn’t seem to find any of this unsettling, which caused Mrs. Mannerd to wonder if there had been more children like Marybeth. “I assure you, Mrs. Mannerd, I’ve seen all sorts of tantrums. They do happen. How long has Marybeth been in your charge?”

  “Five years,” Mrs. Mannerd said. She held the hatbox in her lap.

  Delores selected a pencil and reached for her pad. “And what’s known about her parents?”

  “Not very much, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “Her mother died just after she was born, and her father succumbed to tuberculosis. She has a second cousin in Canada, but she couldn’t afford to keep her, and so she found her way to me.”

  Delores wrote a few notes, but angled the pad so that Mrs. Mannerd wouldn’t be able to read.

  Mrs. Mannerd’s stomach ached with her anxiety. “Can’t I go and see her?”

  “If you’d like to see her before you leave, you certainly can. But after that we don’t encourage visitors for at least a month. It can delay progress. What’s in that hatbox?”

  “I’ve brought a few things from home. Extra sock
s and soap and the like.”

  Delores’s smile never waned. “That won’t be necessary. She’ll have everything she needs here.”

  Mrs. Mannerd worried like she had never worried before. Her own instincts were telling her to run down that mint-green hallway and snatch Marybeth away from those nurses and take her home.

  But then what? Despite her care and patience, Marybeth had only gotten worse. She had harmed one of the older children. She scratched that doctor. She continued to run away at night. There was no shortage of terrible things that could happen to a small girl out alone in the middle of the night.

  She wanted to take her home, but she knew that she couldn’t.

  After Delores had finished with her questions about Marybeth’s health, she led Mrs. Mannerd along.

  “Where are the other children?” Mrs. Mannerd asked. It had finally occurred to her how quiet this place was. A home for children, even sick children, should never be quiet.

  “In their rooms,” Delores said. “I find it’s best for them to be separated, so that they don’t antagonize one another. Here we are.” She reached into the collar of her dress and extracted a necklace that contained several keys. She shuffled through them and found one that opened the door near the end of the hallway. The door was as mint green as the walls, and blended in so well that Mrs. Mannerd almost hadn’t seen it.

  “This won’t be her permanent room,” Delores said, working the key into the lock. “All our new patients spend a night or two in here for monitoring, and then she’ll be brought upstairs.”

  Delores opened the door, and for one hopeful moment, Mrs. Mannerd expected Marybeth to run up and hug her and ask to be taken home.

  What she saw, instead, was that strange creature she’d seen on the front steps outside. She didn’t know how to describe it. It was Marybeth and not Marybeth.

  The room had only one window, which was higher than Mrs. Mannerd’s head. And it had a single bed with white sheets and a metal frame. There Marybeth was, with her hands and feet tied to all four corners of the bed, shivering like a rabbit about to face the chopping block.