Hart & Boot & Other Stories (7 page)

She nodded, once.

He held up the hammer and screwdriver. “Am I doing the right thing?”

She nodded more vigorously.

Billy went back to work. She’d thank him, and maybe there’d be a reward, and best of all she’d have a story to tell him, how she wound up in the box, what it meant, who’d trapped her and why.

Billy hit the screwdriver for the last time, on the beveled edge above her head. Then he stepped back, unsure what to do next. If he tried to shove the top of the casket away, the edge would cut his hands to pieces. Maybe he could get a stick, or find some gloves, or—

The top of the casket rose up, away from the sides. At first Billy thought it was levitation, a magic trick, but then he saw the girl lifting it with her hands and her knees. She shoved the lid aside, and it fell to the ground, shattering with a sound so loud and startling that Billy dropped his hammer and screwdriver.

The girl sat up. She took a deep breath, then coughed, covering her mouth. Billy thought about the Boy in the Bubble again, and was afraid he’d done a very bad thing.

Then she laughed, and said, “I haven’t smelled fresh air in a long time.” She croaked more than she talked, but Billy could understand her. He went to the coffin, then wrinkled his nose. The girl
reeked
.

She frowned at him. “Try getting shut inside a box for... well... for a long time, anyway, and see how good you smell, kid.”

Billy nodded, seeing the sense in that, and held out a hand to help her. She ignored his hand, stood up in the casket, then jumped out, landing on the asphalt in a crouch. She stood up, tugged down her dress, and grinned. “I got away from the old bastard again,” she said. “Ha!” She looked down at Billy. “Thanks, kid. Where am I, anyway?”

Billy just blinked at her. She didn’t sound like a Glass Casket Killer victim, or a magic princess, or anything. She sounded like the girls in the older grades at his school, that was all, a little snotty, like he was just a dumb kid. “How did you—”

She held up her hand in a gesture demanding silence, then lifted her nose and looked around. “Shit. He’s nearby.” She dug her heel into the asphalt—right on a shard of glass!—and dragged her bare foot along the ground, wincing. She left a little streak of blood on the pavement, like red crayon on black construction paper.

“What are you doing?” he said, staring at the blood.

“Making a protective circle,” she said, gritting her teeth. “But it’s too damned
slow
. Do you have a knife, or something?”

“Does it have to be blood?” he said, backing away. She had such beautiful white skin, and he couldn’t stand to watch her tear it this way.

She paused. “No, if this was sand I could just drag a line through the dirt. The circle has to be unbroken, though, and I can’t think of any way to do that here except for blood.”

Billy didn’t ask why she needed a circle. He knew why, though he couldn’t say
how
he knew. Maybe he’d seen it in a movie, or maybe the knowledge simply lived in him. They needed a circle to keep the bad things out.

“Wait!” he said when she started dragging her foot again. He rummaged through the toolbox and came up with the chalk line reel. “Will chalk work?”

“Perfect,” she said, snatching it from his hand. She knelt, and Billy could see the bottoms of her feet. The one she’d dragged was bloody, but the soles of both feet were covered in thin white scars, like they’d been scratched repeatedly and deeply by knives. She moved the chalk line reel slowly, drawing a ragged circle around herself, Billy, and the remains of the casket.

“What happened to your feet?” he asked when she’d finished drawing the circle.

She glanced at him, frowning. “Do you know the story of the little mermaid?”

“I saw the movie,” Billy said.

“I don’t know about any movie. I’m talking about the one where the mermaid is given legs so that she can walk around on land, but every step is agony, as if knives are being driven into her feet. That story.”

“I don’t know that story,” Billy said. He looked at her feet again, fascinated. “You were a mermaid?”

She laughed. “No, kid. But my dad liked the idea, and thought making my feet hurt like that every time I left the house would be a good way to keep me from running off.” She shook her head, her dark red hair swinging and obscuring part of her face. “Didn’t work, though. I could ignore the pain for a while, and eventually I always found somebody to carry me.”

“Your
dad
did that?” Billy couldn’t imagine such a thing.

“Yeah. When that didn’t work, he tried the box. He said it would keep me young and beautiful, and I guess it did, but he didn’t tell me he never planned to let me out. But I’m my father’s daughter, and I know tricks, too. It took a long time, but I finally managed to get away, glass box and all—”

“Caroline!” someone shouted.

Billy jumped, and the girl put a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “The circle keeps him from seeing us, but he can still hear us.”

They sat very still. The voice called again. “Caroline! I know you’re here.”

Mr. Mancuso appeared, walking into the pool of blue-tinted brightness cast by the sodium-vapor lights. He headed straight for Billy’s bike, propped against the pallets, outside the protective circle. “Oh, little boy,” he called. “I know you’re here. You found her, didn’t you? My pretty little girl in the glass box.”

Mr. Mancuso was Caroline’s dad. Billy thought of her scarred feet and tried to breathe quietly.

“I knew if I followed you I’d find her,” Mr. Mancuso said. “Little boys get everywhere, they see everything. Where’ve you gone? Come out and give her up, my boy. I’m used to young men doing foolish things for my Caroline, but you’re a little younger than most.” He laughed. “She’s a bad girl, Billy, always running off, abandoning her old man. You can understand how much that hurts, can’t you? Your father left
you
. Nothing hurts worse than being left behind. I’m offering a straight trade, boy. You give me Caroline, and I’ll give you back your father. I know you’re afraid he’d just run off again if he came back... but I can make it so he won’t. I can make him
want
to stay.”

Billy believed him, and part of him wanted to shout, to scuff away the chalk circle with his foot and let Mr. Mancuso in. Because he loved his dad, and he wanted him back. Mr. Mancuso was right. Nothing hurt like being abandoned.

Billy turned his head. Caroline stared at him, her eyes wide. She crouched perfectly still, watching to see what he would do. Billy thought about opening his mouth. He could scream before she stopped him, and then he’d get his dad back. His mother would be happy, and she wouldn’t yell at him so much, and she would let him go and play with his friends.

But Billy remembered Caroline’s tears, when she was inside the box. No matter how tough she seemed now, she’d been crying before. And her feet... if something like that, some spell, was the only way to make Billy’s dad stay home, it was better to let him stay away.

Maybe some things did hurt worse than being abandoned.

Mr. Mancuso touched the bike’s handlebars, then sniffed his fingers. He walked toward the coffin, frowning, squinting.

He stopped on the edge of the circle. “Now what’s this?” he said. He waved his hands in front of him, frowning. “Something’s amiss.”

Caroline grabbed Billy’s arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. She looked at her father, who was muttering, and moving his hands in strange patterns, and chuckling to himself.

Billy looked around. The far edge of the circle went right up to the wall of the Safeway. There was a hole in the bricks there, a small opening half-hidden by a broken pallet. Billy pointed toward the hole. Caroline frowned. Billy gestured more vigorously, a shooing-in motion. She shook her head.

Trust me
, Billy mouthed. Caroline scowled, then nodded. She moved laboriously away on hands and knees, carefully avoiding the fragments of the casket lid. Billy got up and tiptoed to the casket. When Caroline reached the edge of circle, near the dark hole, Billy put his hands on the casket and shoved as hard as he could.

It didn’t resist him this time. The glass box slid off the pallet and smashed on the asphalt, shattering just like Dad’s brandy decanter had when Mom hurled it into the fireplace. Caroline scurried into the hole, the noise of her escape covered by the splintering of glass. Fragments of the coffin cascaded over the chalk line, breaking whatever charm had hidden Billy before.

Mr. Mancuso blinked at him, then stepped on the broken glass. “Where is she?”

Billy did his best to look like a scared kid. It wasn’t hard. He whimpered and backed away. “I don’t know. I broke open the coffin, and let her out, and then she drew this circle around me and told me that if I stepped outside it her dad would catch me, and put me in a glass box until I ran out of air and died.”

“Why did you shove the coffin over?” His hands moved slowly, sinuously, as if independent of the rest of his body.

Billy shrank away. “You came so close, I was sure you’d find me. I was afraid you’d put me inside the box, so I broke it. I was afraid you’d put the lid back on and seal me up.”

“That’s just what I should do, too,” he said. “Why didn’t you do as I asked? Why didn’t you take me to her? I would have given you your father back.”

“I know,” Billy said, and when he cried, the tears were real. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Mr. Mancuso kicked the fragments of the coffin. “I should punish you, little boy. I should tie you to your mother forever, make it so you vomit blood if you’re ever out of her sight. Does that sound nice?” He grinned, and the snake-dance of his hands sped up. “You don’t have the will my Caroline does, you’d never manage to break that bond. And when your mother dies—because all of you always die—you’ll have to lay atop her grave just to stay alive. Yes. I’d make you a devoted son.”

Billy closed his eyes and whimpered.

“Bastard,” Caroline said. “Leave him alone.”

Billy’s eyes snapped open. Mr. Mancuso whirled around. Caroline was standing outside the circle. She must have crawled through the dark, charred inside of the grocery store and come out another hole in the wall. She held a large triangular shard of glass, from the coffin or just from the general wreckage around the store, Billy didn’t know. She put the point of the glass against her throat. “Let the kid go, Dad, or I’m
really
going to leave you forever.”

“You wouldn’t,” Mr. Mancuso said.

“You know I would.”

Mr. Mancuso looked at Billy, then spat. “Fine. Come back to me, and I’ll let the boy go.”

“No negotiation, no compromise. Let him go now, or I’ll cut my throat.”

“If you kill yourself, I’ll do anything to the boy I want.” His hands were moving slowly again, hypnotically, but Caroline didn’t look at them.

“You won’t let me kill myself, though. Then you wouldn’t have anything left.”

Mr. Mancuso’s hands stopped moving, and then he slumped. He suddenly looked very old. “Go on, then,” he said, flapping a hand at Billy.

“I want your blood on it, Dad. That you won’t harm him or anyone he loves.”

Mr. Mancuso frowned. “Are you trying to trick me? You think he loves
you
, that you’ll be protected?”

Billy looked at her, startled.

“He might love me a little, for coming back just now, but that’s not what I mean. I mean his mother, and his father, wherever he is. You never try to hurt me, anyway, do you Daddy? You just try to keep me safe.” She spat the last word, and pressed the glass closer to her throat, until a spot of blood welled.

“Fine!” Mancuso shouted. He held a long, shining blade in his hand, a slender silvery knife that had appeared as if by magic, but without sparkles or fanfare. Mr. Mancuso cut his palm and made a fist, dripping blood onto the asphalt. The blood hissed and smoked where it touched the ground, and Billy backed away, afraid it would spatter on his shoes. “I will not harm this boy or any he loves.”

“Go on, Billy,” Caroline said, lowering the shard of glass.

“But what will happen to you?” Billy said. “What about—”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “You let me out of the coffin. I’m better off now than I was before. I might get away clean this time.”

“You’re mine,” Mr. Mancuso said. “You’re my blood, and you will not leave me.”

“Get on your bike and go, Billy,” Caroline said. She sounded very tired, as tired as Billy’s mom often did.

Billy took his bike and pedaled away, not looking back, crying as he rode, the wind blowing his tears away.

Once he got home, Billy crept into the house, only to find his mother lying on his bed with the lights on, clutching his pillow.

“Mom?” he said.

“Billy?” she said, sitting up, still holding the pillow. Her hair was mussed, her eyes red from crying. “I thought you ran away.” She shivered, and stopped speaking, and sobbed, soundlessly, shaking.