The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart (10 page)

When the noise came again, he recognized that it was only the sound of firewood being chopped. There was nothing to be afraid of. But he didn't miss the glare Marybeth gave in the direction of the sound, as though she hated it and couldn't bear to go on listening to it.

“Mrs. Mannerd has come to take us home,” Lionel said, speaking in the cautious measured tone he reserved for the coyotes.

He held out his hand, and Marybeth stared at it and then at him.

“Come on, children,” Mrs. Mannerd called from the end of the hall. “Let's go home. We've imposed enough.”

Marybeth didn't move. She shuddered, and only Lionel saw it. One of her feet dragged across the floor, as though she were trying to stand.

“
Marybeth,
” Mrs. Mannerd called, exasperated now. She was at least accustomed to Lionel being uncooperative and bizarre, but for once he was perfectly reasonable. Marybeth was the one Mrs. Mannerd didn't know what to do with.

Mrs. Mannerd stomped down the hall. She was the animal now, Lionel thought. A jungle cat moving too fast for him to stop. Lionel tried to warn her, tried to say, “Stop.” But it was too late. Mrs. Mannerd grabbed Marybeth by the coat sleeve, and the fragile balance was broken.

Marybeth let out a scream that was not at all human. It was the cry of prey being eaten alive. The sound dug through Lionel's skin and blood, and it hit his bones and made him shiver.

Mrs. Mannerd was barely able to gasp before Marybeth had darted from the room, just a blur of brown tangled hair.

The old woman tried to close the door before Marybeth could escape, but Marybeth was too fast for her. She ran out into the cold morning air and let the screen door slam behind her.

Lionel took a step, and Mrs. Mannerd grabbed him by the collar of his coat. She was not trying to restrain him, Lionel realized. She was trying to protect him. Even Mrs. Mannerd was afraid of what Marybeth was becoming.

Lionel did not struggle. He did not try to break free. He did not scream. He took a deep breath and tried to remember how to be a human boy.

He turned to face Mrs. Mannerd. “Please,” he said. “I can find her. She'll listen to me.”

It wasn't a lie. While Lionel could not claim to understand the blue creature that was fighting Marybeth for dominance, he did know that Marybeth was in there somewhere.

Mrs. Mannerd stared at him a good long while. Lionel had been in her charge for years, and with each year he'd grown wilder than the last. But in recent weeks she had come to see his reasonable side. He was even polite. She was beginning to realize that for each time Lionel behaved like a cat or a wolf or a monkey, even she had forgotten that he truly was a boy under all of that. And now she could see it clearly.

“Oh, Lionel.” She sat in one of the kitchen chairs so that she could meet his eye level. “You're frightened, aren't you?”

Lionel didn't answer, but he didn't have to.

“I don't know what has come over Marybeth,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “But I think that she is beyond being able to listen. We can't help her, you and I.”

“I can,” Lionel said eagerly. “Please.” He hated that word. Only humans would ever ask permission. Every other animal in the world knew when it was time to act.

“She isn't well,” Mrs. Mannerd said, and there were tears in her eyes. “You see it, I know you do.”

She was a mourning mother bird again, but also, strangely, a human. Lionel could see the sadness and the
worry in her creased face. He understood. They weren't as different as he'd once thought, and it frightened him.

He turned for the door.

“Wait,” Mrs. Mannerd said.

“I can find her,” Lionel said. And Mrs. Mannerd didn't try to stop him, perhaps because he had bothered to explain what he was doing.

He ran past the sounds of firewood being chopped and made his way to the barn, where he did indeed find Marybeth. She was huddled behind some hay bales, clawing frantically at the ground.

It was cold in here, and for once Lionel could truly feel it, even through his wool coat.

Marybeth was breathing fast as she dug, and little cold clouds were coming out of her mouth and disappearing. Marybeth was as fragile as those little clouds she breathed. There one moment and not the next.

Lionel knelt beside her. The gloves Marybeth wore were already old and fraying, but now they were coming completely apart. Her fingertips were starting to bleed.

Lionel thought about the claws it would take for an animal to dig through this hard, cold dirt, and he thought about Marybeth's soft touch and gentle hands, and he was quite fed up with this blue creature.

“Listen to me,” he said, quite firmly.

The digging stopped. Marybeth looked at him, her dark eyes flickering with bits of blue, as though someone was shining a blue light in them.

“This nonsense has got to stop,” he said, recycling what Mrs. Mannerd had told him hundreds of times. “I know you don't mean to be bad. You're just spooked. But there's a way of going about things. If you want help, you have to try to be reasonable. You have to try.”

Marybeth's breathing slowed. Her nostrils flared as though picking up Lionel's scent.

“Marybeth will help you,” Lionel went on, still speaking firmly. The more he spoke, the easier it became. Even if he did prefer to howl and hiss. “She'd help anyone who asked for it. But you need to free her so she can do it. If you carry on this way, you're going to hurt her, and then where will you be?”

After he had said all he had to say, Lionel sat back on his heels and waited. He did not know if his words would reach the blue creature. He rarely spoke to his animals, and even when he did, it was mostly just nonsense meant to soothe them. They understood tones and gestures, not the words themselves.

But the blue creature inside Marybeth was not like any of those animals.

The blue light left Marybeth's eyes, and all at once she started to shiver in the cold.

She looked at Lionel with that face he had known for most of his life. Just a touch crazed and startled, but familiar.

For once, she was the one who didn't have words. Instead, she crawled to him across the hay and put her arms around him.

Lionel held her and petted her tangled hair and said, “It's all right.”

Mrs. Mannerd had followed Lionel to the barn, and now she stood in the doorway, watching them.

She saw the way the children clung to each other. For just the moment, she didn't interrupt them.

Eventually, Marybeth got to her feet, and Lionel kept close to her side as they walked for the car.

Marybeth felt hollow, as though the blue creature had dug a hole for itself in her belly and removed all her organs to make room. Her legs were rubbery, her fingers sore. “Get in the car where it's warm,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “Goodness, Marybeth, your skin is turning blue.”

Lionel and Marybeth climbed into the backseat. Mrs. Mannerd closed the door behind them, and as she walked around to the driver's side, Marybeth nudged Lionel. “You see that man over there carrying the firewood?”

Lionel followed her gaze to the old woman's son, Reginald, piling the firewood beside the house. He nodded.

Marybeth looked at Lionel, her eyes wide. “He knows something.”

Lionel looked hopeful. “What does he know?”

“I'm not sure. I—Maybe he knew the blue creature when it was alive.” She hesitated and then put her hand on the door to open it. “I should try again to ask him. I was going to earlier, but then I lost control.”

“No.” Lionel held the door closed. The sudden worry in his eyes gave Marybeth a chill. “No,” he said again. “What if he's the one who killed it?”

CHAPTER

12

Lionel hid in the shadows outside the living room, watching as the doctor opened his suitcase.

Marybeth sat on the couch with a thermometer in her mouth as Mrs. Mannerd paced and fretted before her.

Marybeth did not look at all sick. In fact, she'd made an effort to appear normal. She'd brushed her hair and even braided it. She wore a green gingham dress that was free of any wrinkles or stains, despite being secondhand, and white socks whose holes she had sewn shut and whose lace trim she had repaired.

Only Lionel knew Marybeth's face well enough to see that lines were beginning to form under her eyes. They were very faint and tinged with blue.

She glanced across the room and spotted Lionel in the shadows, and she tried to give him a reassuring smile around the thermometer.

Lionel did not like doctors. He had learned to be like a cat and hide his illnesses when they came so as to avoid the tonics and the pills, but especially the needles. Maybe the only things Lionel hated more than doctors were needles.

As for Marybeth, she had always enjoyed doctors. She enjoyed eating vegetables and brushing her teeth and scrubbing her face until it was pink, making sure her spectacles were straight, her hair combed and clean. She enjoyed being told that she was healthy as a horse—which she always was. She even enjoyed the needles, because the liquid left the syringe and went into her blood to keep her well. She was like a house that cleaned itself, Mrs. Mannerd liked to say.

The doctor was tall and thin, with a complexion almost as gray as his hair. He was very old. Older than Mrs. Mannerd. But he was the only doctor in town who still made house calls, and he never charged Mrs. Mannerd full price for his visits, because he said that she did a noble thing caring for so many children as she did.

The doctor took the thermometer from Marybeth, looked at it, and said, “A perfect ninety-eight point six.”

Marybeth sat up a little straighter, proud of herself if only for the meager achievement of passing this test.

Lionel cowered from a distance. He had promised to stay nearby, in case the blue creature returned and he needed to help tame it. But he would not get any closer than this.

The doctor reached into his suitcase and unfolded a footstool. With a grunt and the creaking of bones, he knelt before Marybeth and shined his flashlight down her throat. He checked her reflexes, even looked in her ears. One after another, she passed each of his tests.

But then Lionel saw it. The doctor had outstayed the blue creature's tolerance. He had prodded at her one too many times. Lionel knew this when Marybeth gripped her skirt in her fist. Her chest stopped moving as she held her breath, and her face was determined. She crossed her legs, which were shaking from the strain of trying to stay in control.

Lionel swallowed his fear of the doctor and crawled out from the shadows. He hoped his presence would calm the blue creature, but he was just a second too late.

The blue creature returned with that vicious, protective snarl, followed by a hiss. The doctor nearly toppled off his stool, no doubt startled that such a sweet and small thing as Marybeth could make that fearsome sound. She lashed out, and Lionel could hear her nails raking across the doctor's face.

Mercifully, the blue creature did not attack again, but scrambled across the room on all fours and hid behind Lionel's legs.

Just like that, Lionel forgot the doctor and Mrs. Mannerd. He crouched down before the blue creature, whose eyes were only faintly glowing. “Remember what I told you yesterday,” he whispered. “We'll help you, but you have to be reasonable.”

The blue creature sat on the floor, and the gesture was almost human. Almost. But the doctor's shadow overtook Marybeth's body and the blue creature whimpered like a frightened animal.

The doctor hunched forward, squinting for a better look. Thin lines of blood were swelling up on his cheek from the scratches.

Instinctively, Lionel stepped in front of Marybeth. He reminded himself not to snarl. That would only make things worse.

Mrs. Mannerd stood beside the doctor, and Lionel saw the hope go out of her face. Marybeth had managed to convince her that she was better, if only for a few moments. “The children are quite protective of each other.”

“Yes, yes, I see that,” the doctor said. “But in this state, I worry—well—that is—has she harmed any of the children?”

“She wouldn't,” Lionel said, and only a moment later realized that this wasn't entirely true.

Mrs. Mannerd covered her eyes with one hand. “A few weeks ago she bit one of the older boys. Three times her size, and she knocked him flat on his back. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see for myself.”

“She wouldn't hurt me,” Lionel insisted.

“Lionel, hush,” Mrs. Mannerd said.

“Ah,” the doctor said. “I wonder if we might speak privately, then?” With a sweep of his arm, he gestured to the door.

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Mannerd said, and led him into the kitchen.

Just as soon as they were gone, Marybeth covered her eyes. “How bad was it?” she said. “The scratch.”

“It was nothing,” Lionel said. He was lying, but he didn't care so long as it might console her.

“I nearly killed him,” Marybeth said, still covering her eyes.

“It'll barely leave a mark,” Lionel said.

Marybeth shook her head. “Not that. Reginald. Back at the farmhouse. He handed me the ax and told me to try chopping the firewood. I knew I wasn't supposed to, but we never get to do anything like that here, and I wanted to try it.”

She lowered her hands from her eyes. Her fingers were scarred from all the digging through the hard earth. Even
when she looked like herself, parts of the blue creature were taking over her skin.

“As soon as I'd raised the ax, this strength overtook me, and it was like I was watching everything happen in a dream. It tried to make me swing the ax right into his chest. Or—someone's chest. All I know is that the blue creature wanted to do something terrible. I don't know how I managed to stop it, but I was able to drop the ax and run.

“Once I got as far as the farmhouse, the old woman who lives there came out and offered me something to eat. And I think—the blue creature likes her. I'm not sure why. I remember stepping inside, but after that it's all foggy until you found me in the barn.”