The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart (13 page)

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 socks 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.

“Are the restraints really necessary?” Mrs. Mannerd said. Her own voice felt miles away. She thought that she might faint.

“Our methods may seem unnerving at first, but I assure you, they yield results,” Delores said. “When our children behave hysterically, this is where they end up. Most get wiser and are never brought here again.”

Mrs. Mannerd took a shaky step forward. “Marybeth?”

Marybeth looked at her, and to any stranger, the look on her face might have been taken for anger. But Mrs. Mannerd knew her, and knew that it was something else. This was not the sweet child she had cared for all these years. Mrs. Mannerd could not shake the feeling that this was not Marybeth at all.

She was still wearing her new gloves. Her fingers wriggled helplessly in their restraints, but she had stopped truly fighting.

Mrs. Mannerd knelt by the bed. She tried to pet Marybeth's hair, but a low growl stopped her, and she withdrew her hand.

“This isn't forever,” she said. “I'll come and visit. And once you're better, I'll take you back home for good. Do you understand? This isn't permanent.”

Marybeth's lips parted, and it looked as though she wanted to say something. There was a moment of recognition in her eyes.

But all that came out of her was a growl and then a whimper, like a fox that had its leg caught in a trap.

During the long drive back to the little red house, the hatbox sat in the seat where Marybeth had been just an hour before, and Mrs. Mannerd could not remember the last time that she had been so sad.

CHAPTER

16

The shovel hit something hard, and at last Lionel allowed himself to stop digging. Despite the cold air, his face was sweating and his shoulders felt like they were on fire.

The hole he dug went past his waist now, and he knelt in the loosened dirt and began to brush it away.

There was something buried here, and now he could sense it, the way animals sensed rain. He dug through clumps of dirt, pebbles, and frail broken roots.

His fingers touched the hard thing that he'd first struck with the shovel. But when he brushed more of the dirt away, the first thing he saw was the color yellow.