The Heartbeat Thief (27 page)

No note, no quip. No scrap of parchment. Just a destination.

Some things, she knew, she could not put off.

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night.”

Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death

Clutching the journal, she gazed up to the cottage on top of the hill. A far cry from the manors and the grand historical estates to which she was accustomed, her new residence stood, tiny and stubborn, a bulwark against the Atlantic wind. The building was rough-patched with weathered blue paint cement walls, a spotted shingled roof. One story, quite possibly one room.

As she climbed the rocky path, she could see shutters bolted across the windows, although a banging suggested one had blown loose. The building would be sparsely filled, and poorly lit, and the wind would be at home within.

Did he send her here as punishment for disobeying his command?

She tucked the parchment into a pocket and resumed the trudge up the rocky path. He had always made sure she had what she wanted in the past. He had not failed her now. He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.

When she shouldered open the sticking door, she let slip a tiny sigh of relief, her faith in Knell rewarded. The interior was nothing that she expected.

High ceilings, a spacious apartment—the outsides had been completely deceiving. What appeared to be decaying and rickety and awful on the outside was as sumptuous and as glittering as a handful of black diamonds.

The walls were lined with bookshelves that spanned from floor to ceiling. Every manner of book crammed the shelves, and the spaces that were not occupied by books were taken up by knick-knacks, thick candles, and Victorian trinkets. Great tripod braziers stood in every corner, their fires cozy but sullen-looking.

The centerpiece of the luscious parlor was a monstrous grandfather clock, coal-black and gleaming like the dark side of the moon.

And, everywhere, shades of black and gray, ebony and silver—sheer splendor. Opulence, gauzy-tapestried, thick-carpeted splendor. It looked like a mourning hall, as deep as death yet intoxicating with its splendor.

Senza chewed her lip before nodding once. She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her like a mausoleum.

She had arrived at her final destination.

Long nights passed by in velvety unbroken streams as she read, book after book, finding comfort in the lives of their fictional habitants. Her father’s entire library had been brought here, along with every book she’d ever read, ever longed to read. Each small joy, each grand drama was like a balm on her soul. She read, she mused, and she read some more. Every book she’d ever dreamed of was in that library.

Occasionally, she’d find a tome written by someone she’d once known in those early London days, when Mrs. Brandon would tote her along to meet every artist in Chelsea. Certain passages would make her smile as she recalled a discussion, often heated, remembering when the learned men of society tried to match wits with the fresh-faced ingénue. She smiled, remembering their faces when they realized their defeat.

One long night, as the darkness was rhythmically split by silver-blue streaks of lightning, she closed a book and got up to stretch. The room lit with the fury of the September storm outside, and a cold eerie light illuminated a book she hadn’t noticed before. Curiosity made her furrow her brows and she reached for it without hesitation.

The black leather cover was creased with age and use. She opened to the title page.
Edgar Allan Poe. A Collection of His Works.

For the first time, the clock chimed, its booming peals making her jump.

She looked over her shoulder, out toward the darkling sea. Something was coming. The premonition settled itself like that infernal raven upon her chest, unmoving, never quitting.

While her nights were spent deep in pensive reading and the musings that made blur of consciousness, the days were passed on the weathered porch, staring out at the sea.

The constant, eternal sea—as never-changing as she. Years and storms and ships roll by but in the end, the sea notices none of them, is altered not at all. The tides rise and fall, swaying to the change of the moon, only proof that time marches forward. Surf upon the rocks, a rhythmic crash, so much like a heartbeat.

She found peace in the solitude, lulled by the waves and the constant companionship of a heartbeat that was safe from her greedy touch.

Would she end her days here on her lonely cliff? Could there ever be an end?

The locket had grown heavy over the years, swollen with pilfered heartbeats. She stole beats now without thinking, an automatic gesture. One from the delivery boy who brought her groceries each week, slipping it from his wrist when she placed the always-generous payment into his hand; one from the pastor when he reached to grasp her hand in greeting when she passed on her solitary walks through town.

She had no hunger for the beats, no desperate driving need to sustain herself because here, in this sea-salted coastal village, she put no effort into living. She merely existed, and existing used hardly a heartbeat at all. Each time she stole a beat, she only gave it vague consideration. What was one more beat in an eternity of them?

The heavy locket felt more and more like the proverbial albatross. It was a constant weight, a persistent reminder that gravity conquers all, in the end. Gravity and time and death itself dragged each and every movement to a grinding halt and, in the end, everything should end.

Nearly twelve months had passed since she first walked into the house on the hill, but those twelve months felt longer than all the months she’d endured since 1861.

Senza realized those twelve months felt very much like a clock coming up upon midnight, the witching hour, the moment of reckoning. All would come full circle. Everything must end.

She found herself one afternoon at the edge of the cliff. Behind her stood the blue-shuttered sepulcher, before her spread the dread eternity of the heartless sea. Between them, a selfish girl who’d spent lifetimes chasing life for all the wrong reasons.

In her hands, the locket.

She flicked open the lid, staring at the ruby pulse within. How many years had she worn it?

She knew exactly how long. She snapped it closed and fisted her fingers around it. One hundred fifty five years. Seven months. Thirteen days. She knew because of all the dates upon all the calendars that had come and gone, she remembered exactly one day.

Her Unbirthing day.

Unbirthing. What a ridiculous word. A ridiculous word for a ridiculous notion that someone could be unborn. It went against nature—

A shudder went through her, a violent chill. It went against nature just as did she.

The sun had set behind her, thick evening clouds blotting out the coral fires of sunset’s departure. Staring out over the steely Atlantic, she faced the approaching night. What if she closed her eyes, reducing the available light to ruddiness? Twilight was little more than pale violet, and violet was a water-colored purple long diluted, a hazy memory of the color it once had been. So had she become, a thinned hue, reminiscent of the life she’d once lived.

Twilight’s violet kiss faded to black, just as did time and all that surrounded her, until nothing but an endless night remained.

She yanked the locket, snapping the chain, and dangled it at arm’s length, watching it swing like a pendulum. She’d born this weight for over a hundred fifty years. Despite the years and the events and the tragedies, the myriad of lives and the mountains of falsehoods, she was still just a girl. She should have wedded, had children and grandchildren. She should have died in a sunny room with her favorite grandchild perched upon the blankets, holding her hand and begging her to stay, just one more day, so many things they hadn’t had a chance to do…

The tears that quick-silvered from her eyes were genuine and long over-due.

She’d made her bargain. She’d gained the time to do everything, left no chance untaken, evading death in the singular desire to live—and she hadn’t lived at all. No companion with whom to spend her days, no children in whom to delight. Everything she’d been afraid of losing—she still didn’t have them. All these wretched endeavors, all for naught.

It was time. She dangled the pendant in front of her, gazing one last time at the spellbound amulet, before drawing back her hand to throw it—and her life, if that’s what it could be called—into the heartless sea.

A cough from somewhere down the cliff distracted her. She froze, alarmed by the nearness of another person, and she stayed her hand.

A man stood on a lower cliff, arms outstretched, back to the ocean. He intended to jump.

“No!” Senza couldn’t hold back the scream, a desperate impulse. Hers was a curse of long, empty years. Didn’t he realize the treasure that was an ordinary lifespan? His life couldn’t have been long enough to face despair such as hers, to be desperate enough to stop living. “Don’t!”

Her voice carried on a wave of conviction, un-thwarted by the deterring wind. If only he had a portion of her own will, the will that drove her to evade death—

The man twisted, seeking the source of the voice, looking startled and stricken. His eyes had barely caught sight of her when his foot rolled on a loose stone and he slipped, wind-milling his arms to regain his balance.

He failed. With a yelp, he disappeared over the edge.

Senza stuffed the amulet into the top of her bodice. She raced down the path, scrambled down the slope to the ledge upon which he’d stood just a moment before. Creeping to the edge, she peered over, fearing the sight of his broken body on the rocky shoreline below.

“Help.” He clung to an outcropping, fingers white from the death grip. The rock shifted. If it came loose, he would plummet. His face was pale, eyes wide. “I’m slipping.”

“What were you doing?” She flattened herself on the edge and reached down. “You could have died!”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to do.” He grasped her outstretched hand and tested a new foothold. Finding purchase, he reached for a new finger hold.

She gave him her best impression of Knell, the master of irritating question. “Then why don’t you just let go?”

He stared up at her for several long moments. “Just help me up.”

His progress was slow, interrupted by a bout of coughing that threatened to knock him loose from the cliff. Eventually, he climbed high enough that she could grasp his shoulders and pull him onto the ledge. They both lay, panting from the exertion and the rush of adrenaline that left tingling numbness in its wake.

Far below them, the ebb and flow of constancy beat its eternal rhythm into the rocks and the sand. The force of each wave was a thunder that travelled upwards through their bodies, commanding their breaths to slow, return to normal, march in pace to the rhythm below.

“Well,” he said. “That wasn’t how I thought today would go.”

“Me, neither.” She rolled her head to look at him.

For some reason, it was amusing. Once the giggles took hold, they couldn’t contain their laughter. They lay beneath the sky, on the edge of a deadly precipice, and they laughed together, long after the night spilled over them.