The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart (15 page)

“I have seen a great many things,” one of the nurses said, “but this—this isn't human.”

“Yes it is,” Lionel said.

When he spoke, it was the first time the nurses could bother to notice him. But they didn't get more than a glimpse, because in the next instant he had taken off running for the door.

It was a black moonless night, and once he had stepped outside, Lionel had little sense of where he was. The light from the building's window was faint.

He ran to the building's side first, to see where Marybeth would have escaped from her window.

There was a tree whose branches scraped against the brick. She must have climbed down from there, Lionel thought.

He was overwhelmed by the infiniteness of the woods and overpowered by the rain and cold, but he didn't care. He would search for her as long as it took. All night, if he had to.

And then he saw it. A flash of blue.

It darted through the trees.

“Wait!” Lionel called. His voice was taken by the wind. He ran through the trees, tripping on brambles and roots. “Wait! Marybeth, are you in there? Can you hear me?”

The blue light hesitated and froze in place, giving Lionel enough time for a closer look.

He was frightened by what he saw. There in the darkness, with one hand pressed against the trunk of a large tree, was Marybeth, glowing like a ghost. She was barefoot and wearing a torn white gown that was no defense against this weather. Blood stained her sleeve and her knees.

She was looking at him, with eyes as blue as the rest of her. And Lionel understood that this was not Marybeth. This was the elusive creature he had tracked for days to no avail, thinking it was a fox.

The creature stared at him a moment longer, and Lionel thought he saw recognition in its eyes. But then it was gone again, running into the darkness.

Lionel ran after it. He couldn't predict what the creature was capable of, nor did he understand how it was able to move so quickly. But he knew Marybeth. He knew that she was only human, and that the blue creature would run until Marybeth's body was spent and she died out here in this cold.

“Marybeth,” he called.

Lightning flashed.

“Marybeth!”

At last he stopped to catch his breath. He'd lost all sense of where he was now. The building and its lights were no longer visible, nor was that eerie blue light.

The sound of the rain concealed the sound of Marybeth's footsteps, and he did not know where the blue creature had taken her.

He found a tree with enough footholds for him to climb, and he made his way to the top, clinging to the slick bark. Lightning flashed again, and the world went dark again when it was gone.

“Marybeth!” he called again, when he had climbed as high as the tree would allow. He searched for any trace of blue light, but there was nothing.

As he climbed back down, he began to realize that the water on his cheeks was not entirely from the rain.

Don't cry
, he told himself.

Lions didn't cry.

Birds didn't cry.

Coyotes and tigers and mice didn't cry.

But try as he might, he could not run like a lion and cover the breadth of the woods. He could not fly above the trees and look down and find Marybeth. He had lost her, the way that only a silly, powerless human could lose something so important.

He began to shiver from the cold. He wouldn't go back without her. He would search until he could no longer stand. If she was lost, then he would be lost, too.

Just as he moved to take another futile step, there was a sound behind him.

He spun, and there was Marybeth, on her hands and knees in the mud, poised as though to attack. He could see her fighting behind those eerily glowing eyes. Her fingers were clawing into the ground. Her face twitched as she tried to speak.

She was the one who found her way to him, he realized. The blue creature was whimpering and thrashing its head, trying to resist.

He stayed where he was, with two yards of distance between them.

“It's okay,” Lionel said, and held up his hands. “It's me. You remember me. I won't hurt you.”

He could see the blue creature's conflict. It was frightened, but cold. It didn't want to stay out here, but it wouldn't go back into that awful building.

“You don't have to go back inside,” Lionel said. He was shivering, but he kept his voice steady. “I won't let them leave you here. We can go back home. But you have to let Marybeth out.”

The blue creature nursed its wounded hand.

Lionel took a cautious step closer, then another. The blue creature watched him.

Finally, he was close enough to see Marybeth's face clearly.

“I understand,” Lionel told the blue creature. “I know why you kept running back to the barn. I know that someone killed you.”

The blue creature snarled, not at Lionel, but at some memory his words evoked.

“We're the same, you and me,” Lionel said. “You see how awful humans can be, and you would rather be anything else. You don't want to be a girl anymore. That's okay. You don't have to be.”

The blue creature breathed fast, shallow breaths.

“I can help you,” Lionel said. “But not alone. I need Marybeth back. Please. She isn't yours.”

The blue creature looked at him, and then, in a blink, the blue glow faded away, and all that Lionel could see was Marybeth's pale skin. She raised her head, startled, as though breaking the surface after nearly drowning.

“L-Lionel?”

Lionel unbuttoned his coat and wrapped it around her, pulling up the collar in an attempt to shield her head from the rain. But it was no matter; she was already soaked through.

“It won't stay a-asleep for l-long.” Her teeth were chattering, and she couldn't form more words.

“It's okay,” Lionel said. “I'll help you. It's okay.”

She stumbled when Lionel helped her to her feet, but she was able to move on wobbly legs until they made it back to the light coming from the open door to the building.

Mrs. Mannerd ran down the steps and ushered them inside. Once the door had been closed behind them, she knelt to look at Marybeth. Marybeth's braids were coming undone and her hair had bits of twigs in it. But there was none of that blue tinge Mrs. Mannerd had seen earlier. It must have been a trick of the light, Mrs. Mannerd told herself.

Lionel and Marybeth sat on the floor in the lobby, huddled in a blanket and holding warm cups of tea. Marybeth had changed out of that awful gown and was wearing a brown gingham dress that Mrs. Mannerd had packed for her in the hatbox. Her bloody arm had been washed out and then wrapped in a cloth bandage by rough nurses who were afraid to touch her. She had finally stopped shivering, but still she hadn't said a word.

Lionel stayed close by her side. Though the blue creature had hidden itself for now, he knew that it would be
back. It always came back. Mrs. Mannerd was down the hall giving the nurses a piece of her mind for letting this happen, and Lionel knew he didn't have much time to talk to Marybeth alone.

“I've found where the blue creature is buried,” he said quietly.

Marybeth looked at him. Her nose was running. She took a sip from her tea.

“You were right,” he said. “The blue creature is a girl. Or at least, it was, when she was alive. Someone murdered her and buried her in the shed behind the farmhouse. I dug up the bones.”

Marybeth drew her knees to her chest. “There's a boy with blue buttons for a face,” she said. “I dream about him sometimes. I think that's the murderer.” She looked at him. Her eyes were big and dark. “I don't want to find him.”

“We just have to get you back to the farmhouse,” Lionel said. “If we show the blue creature where her body is, maybe she'll go back to it.”

“And then we tell the police,” Marybeth said. “We have to. She should have a proper burial. Maybe that's all she wants.”

Lionel was going to say more, but Marybeth put her head on his shoulder, and he knew that she was frightened. So all he said was, “Okay.”

“She can't stay here,” a woman down the hall was telling Mrs. Mannerd. “She's evil. She's inhuman.”

“She's only a child,” Mrs. Mannerd cried. “I made the awful mistake of trusting her to you in the first place. I wouldn't make it again for all the riches in the queen's palace.”

Mrs. Mannerd stormed down the hall and took the cups of tea from Lionel's and Marybeth's hands and set them on the floor. “Come on, children. Come on, up, up, we're leaving.”

Lionel and Marybeth didn't need to be told again. Still wrapped in the shared blanket, they jumped to their feet and followed Mrs. Mannerd out to the car.

Mrs. Mannerd sped down the dark road, hitting every bump and muttering curses.

Lionel and Marybeth were huddled under the blanket in the backseat, clinging to each other. “Stay down,” Marybeth whispered to the blue creature, so quietly that no one else could hear. “Stay down, stay down, stay down.” She sneezed, and Mrs. Mannerd glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Are you feeling sick?” Mrs. Mannerd asked. “Heaven knows how long you were out there—honestly, Marybeth, you used to have better sense.”

“I'm all right, Mrs. Mannerd, thank you,” Marybeth said, and sneezed again.

Lionel could feel the heat from the fever on her skin. She was shivering again. He was frightened, and for several minutes he contemplated what to do.

Marybeth must have been thinking about the same thing, because she whispered, “We should tell her.”

Lionel hesitated. He pulled the blanket up so that their faces were shielded from Mrs. Mannerd. “Once we get home, we can run away to the farmhouse. I'll show you where the skeleton is.”

“Lionel, no,” Marybeth said, with heartbreaking practicality. “I won't make it.”

“I'll carry you,” he said. But Marybeth didn't have to plead her case. He already knew she was right.

Marybeth lowered the blanket. “Mrs. Mannerd?” she said. “We have something to tell you.”

CHAPTER

18

Mrs. Mannerd did not believe them about the blue creature. Or, at least, she was trying not to. “It was a figment of your imagination,” she said, looking at Marybeth in the mirror. “It was dark and you were in a panic after you fell into the river.”

“I saw it, too,” Lionel said.

“You also think that you can turn into a bear,” Mrs. Mannerd reasoned.

Lionel climbed out of the blanket and leaned over Mrs. Mannerd's seat so that he could get a better look at her. She glanced between him and the road. “You've seen it,” Lionel said. “I know you have.”

“Lionel, sit back down. No more of this. I'm taking you both home, and, Marybeth, I'm calling the doctor
first thing in the morning and praying you don't get pneumonia.”

“What if we can prove it?” Lionel said. “What if we can prove that all of this is real, and that there is a blue creature?”

“If you can prove it, I'll dance on the kitchen table,” Mrs. Mannerd said.

“Okay,” Lionel said. “Don't take us straight home. Take us to the farmhouse. I'll prove everything.”

He sat back in his seat, quite proud of himself. But his triumph was short lived when he saw Marybeth. She had wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket, and her eyes were as shiny as the wet glass of the car windows.

Lionel put his hands on her cheeks. Burning hot. She stared tiredly back at him.

“It's going to be okay,” he said. “Trust me.”

She curled up against him and closed her eyes.

It was a long drive home. Mrs. Mannerd kept stealing worried glances at Marybeth in the rearview mirror.

Lionel was doing his best not to be angry with the blue creature for what it had done to Marybeth. It was frightened, and tying a frightened thing down in a sterile room was of course going to cause it to panic.

But while Marybeth had this ghost inside her skin, she was only human, and the cold had been too much for her. Lionel had never seen her so tired and frail.