Hart & Boot & Other Stories Read online

  “So anyway,” Sigmund said, sniffing and wiping at his nose. “When can I start doing field work?” He wished he could see the future instead of the past. He thought this was going to be a lot of fun.

  ***

  The cup in Sigmund’s hands held blood, liquid at the center, but dried and crusted on the cup’s rim. Sigmund scraped the residue of dried blood up with his long pinky fingernail. He took a breath. Let it out. And snorted God’s blood.

  ***

  Time snapped.

  ***

  Sigmund looked around the temple. It was white, bright, clean, and no longer on a mountaintop. The windows looked out on a placid sea. He was not alone.

  God looked nothing like Sigmund had imagined, but at the same time, it was impossible to mistake him for anyone else. It was clear that God was on his way out, but he paused, and looked at Sigmund expectantly.

  Sigmund had gone from the end of the world to the beginning. He was so high from snorting God’s blood that he could see individual atoms in the air, vibrating. He knew he could be jerked back to the top of the ruined world at any moment.

  Sigmund tried to think. He’d expected the New Doctor to ask the questions, to make the requests, so he didn’t know what to say. God was clearly growing impatient, ready to leave his creation forever behind. If Sigmund spoke quickly, he could have anything he wanted. Anything at all.

  “Hey,” Sigmund said. “Don’t go.”

  In a Glass Casket

  Billy Cates found the glass casket behind the burned-out Safeway, tucked in between the rusty dumpster and a stack of splintery wooden pallets. Billy leaned his bike against the soot-blackened brick wall and approached the casket. It was simply made, just an oblong box six feet in length, with beveled corners that reminded Billy of his dad’s cut-crystal brandy decanter. Dad hadn’t taken the decanter with him when he left (he hadn’t taken much of anything), but Mom had smashed it in the fireplace.

  The casket rested atop a board laid across two sawhorses. Billy stood at a respectful distance, looking. A girl lay inside, clothed in a red dress, white hands crossed on her stomach. Billy couldn’t see the girl’s face because of the sunlight glaring on the glass, so he stepped closer, sneakers scuffing on the asphalt. He wanted to see her face; he wanted to run away.

  Curiosity won. Billy leaned close to the glass, his head throwing a shadow on the casket and cutting the glare so that he could see the girl’s face. Her eyes were closed, which seemed only natural. Her dark red hair matched her dress, the color of cherry Kool-Aid stains on a white tablecloth. She looked about sixteen. There were girls at school prettier than her, in the higher grades—the girl in the casket didn’t have much of a chin, and her hands were chubby. Her skin was beautiful, though, white and unblemished.

  Billy wondered if she was dead, if this was the work of a serial killer, like in the movies—the Glass Casket Killer, something like that. If she was dead, Billy had to call 911 and tell the police. They wouldn’t believe him, probably, but if they sent someone, they’d see it was true, a dead girl in a glass box. Or maybe she was a magic princess, like in that Disney movie, and she just needed a kiss from a prince to wake her. Billy wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t a prince, and he didn’t want to kiss her, and she was trapped in a glass box anyway.

  His breath fogged the glass, obscuring the girl’s face. Billy wiped the mist away, then looked at his hand in horror. Fingerprints—he’d just left fingerprints all over the glass! The police would be furious with him for sure.

  Billy lowered his hand and looked back down at the girl’s face.

  Her cheeks were wet, and as he watched, tears ran from her closed eyes, down her face, into her hair.

  Billy backed up a step. She wasn’t dead after all, just trapped. Billy could think of one thing better than discovering a dead body, and that was rescuing somebody. The Glass Casket Killer liked to put women in glass boxes until they died, maybe that was it, but Billy could save her.

  He looked around, then headed for a pile of broken-up cinderblocks. He picked up a heavy fragment of concrete in both hands and carried it back to the casket. He thought for a moment about tropical fish tanks, and about the Boy in the Bubble he’d seen in that video at school—maybe letting air in would kill this girl, maybe the casket was sealed to protect her. Billy dropped the concrete. He didn’t want to mess anything up. The fingerprints were bad enough. What sort of trouble could he get in for destroying evidence, or for killing the girl by accident?

  Billy had to go home for dinner soon. Mom didn’t like it when he wasn’t home when she got off work, and she wouldn’t like him hanging around behind the burned-out store. Ever since Dad left last year she’d been like that, yelling at him half the time, hugging him close the other half. He took a last look at the crying girl and went reluctantly to his bicycle. Maybe Mom would know what to do.

  Billy pedaled home, his bike wobbling in slow arcs back and forth across the cracked sidewalks and back streets, thinking about the glass casket, the way the beveled corners caught the afternoon light, the way the girl’s tears fell into her hair. His helmet hung by its chin strap from the handlebars, forgotten as usual. Billy made it home and dragged his bike through the gate into the scraggly front yard. He chained his bike to a post on the porch, and remembered to put his helmet on so his Mom would think he’d been wearing it all along. He went through the front door, calling, “Hey, Mom!”

  His mom was there, sitting stiffly in the straight-backed armchair, and a strange man sat on the couch. The man nodded to Billy. He wore a dark suit and had eyes as blue as Dad’s poker chips. With his slicked-down black hair and his little mustache, he looked like a magician, someone who’d wear a tuxedo on stage and do card tricks, and for the grand finale he’d cut a lady wearing a sequined dress in half, or stick swords through her.

  “Billy, this is Mr. Mancuso,” his mom said. Her voice was wavery, and she looked at him funny, her eyes not quite focusing. “He used to know your father.”

  Billy looked at the man with new interest. “You knew my dad? Do you know where he is now?”

  “I might be able to find him for you,” Mr. Mancuso said. His voice purred, smooth, like a radio announcer on the classical station Billy’s dad had liked. “I’m looking for someone, too, and I’m always willing to exchange help for help.” Billy’s mother didn’t look at Mr. Mancuso as he spoke. She just stared at the blank television screen. That television had never been turned off in the evening, not in Billy’s experience. When Mom was home, the television was on. Even when Mom had company, the most she’d do was turn the volume down low.

  “Children see lots of things,” Mr. Mancuso said, leaning forward, his blue eyes wide, his smile friendly but a little smirky, too. “They go places adults don’t, see things adults wouldn’t notice. Your mother... hasn’t been much help.” Mr. Mancuso frowned a little, like Billy’s mom had disappointed him. “Neither has anyone else I’ve talked to today. But perhaps I’ve been talking to the wrong people. I wonder, have you seen the one I’m looking for?”

  He’s the Glass Casket Killer, Billy thought, only somehow he’s lost his casket. Or maybe he really was a magician, and the girl in red was his lovely assistant, but the last disappearing trick went wrong somehow and he lost track of her. Those blue eyes—they were magician’s eyes, for sure. Billy should help Mr. Mancuso. He should tell him anything he needed to know.

  Billy opened his mouth to say, “She’s behind the Safeway, sitting up on a couple of sawhorses,” but then he remembered the tears. The girl in red was crying, even while sleeping, even while seeming to be dead. Was she crying because she was lost, because she wanted the magic trick to be over? Looking at Mr. Mancuso, Billy didn’t think so. She was crying for some other, more through-and-through reason. Crying for something to do with Mr. Mancuso, maybe.

  “I didn’t see anybody,” Billy said. “I had detention at school and then I rode my bike home straight after. I’m going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
Mom.” Billy hurried into the kitchen before Mr. Mancuso’s blue eyes made him change his mind. Mom would never let him have a snack so close to dinner time, but she didn’t object, and Mr. Mancuso didn’t do anything more than grunt.

  Billy went around the counter to the kitchen, wishing it was in a whole different room, not just sort of partitioned off from the living room. A pan of spaghetti sauce bubbled on the stove, burning and spattering, and the pot of water with the noodles in it had boiled down to almost nothing. It wasn’t like Mom to leave the stove unattended, even with company here. Billy trembled all over, afraid from his skin to his bones—this was worse than having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night after watching a scary movie, because then he only imagined monsters. Mr. Mancuso was here.

  Billy turned off the burners and went to the cabinet to get the peanut butter, trying to act natural, like he had nothing to be afraid of. His heart thudded like he’d just pedaled his bike up a steep hill, and he listened as closely as he could for the creak of the couch, for any sound to indicate what Mr. Mancuso was doing.

  When Billy turned back around to get the bread, Mr. Mancuso was gone. Billy hadn’t heard the door open. His mom stood up, frowned at the TV, and flipped it on with the remote. She looked at Billy, opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head. “Put that peanut butter away,” she said, walking toward him. “I’m fixing dinner.”

  Billy screwed the lid back on the jar, relieved in some way he couldn’t define. Everything was okay, though his mom frowned at the stove and refilled the pot with water.

  She didn’t say anything about Mr. Mancuso at dinner. Billy didn’t either, though he wondered if the man could really find his dad, really bring him back. Maybe he could. But if Dad had left once, wouldn’t he just leave again? Probably so. Billy didn’t mention the girl in the casket, either. His mom was in a bad mood, smoking cigarettes one after another, not talking much. He’d learned not to bother her when she was in moods like this. She’d just yell, or worse, start crying.

  Billy watched TV with his mom for a while, then did his homework, not thinking about it much, probably getting half the math problems wrong. He waited for his mom to say goodnight and go to bed, then waited a while longer for the light to go off under her door, and then a little longer still for her to get good and asleep. Billy had never sneaked out of the house before, and he didn’t want to get caught. He covered some pillows with a blanket so if his mom came to check on him it would look like he was still in bed. The pillow trick didn’t look as convincing for real as it did in the movies, but maybe it was good enough in dim light. Billy put a flashlight in his bookbag, then crept to the garage. He opened his dad’s little red toolbox and looked into it for a while, wondering what he’d need, finally deciding to take the whole thing.

  Billy put the toolbox in his bookbag, wincing at the clank it made as tools bumped around inside, then he slipped out of the house, carefully locking the door behind him. He unchained his bike and rolled it into the street, glad that the playing cards he’d had clothes-pinned to the spokes had fallen off last week. The distinctive “click-click-click” would have probably awakened his Mom. He pedaled away through the empty streets toward the Safeway.

  The area behind the grocery store, including the glass casket, was pretty well lit by a bluish light on a pole, but the shadows up against the building were scary. What if there was a homeless guy there, or a drug dealer? Or Mr. Mancuso? Billy just had to hope it was safe. He parked his bike beside a pile of pallets and went to the casket.

  The girl inside was screaming, her mouth open wide, her head thrashing back and forth, but Billy couldn’t hear anything. She pounded on the top of the casket with her pudgy fists, and lifted her knees convulsively, but the coffin didn’t budge a bit, didn’t rock or shift on its flimsy plywood pedestal. Billy stared at her, momentarily stunned, then he pounded on the side of the casket with his own fists, and frantically checked it for seams or hinges. The girl kept screaming—she didn’t seem to notice him at all. Maybe the coffin was made of one-way glass, so Billy could see inside, but she couldn’t see out. Billy tried to shove the coffin over, thinking that if it fell off the sawhorses the coffin would break open, and spill the girl out.

  The coffin wouldn’t budge. Trying to shove the casket over was like trying to push his house down. The girl inside subsided, her punches against the coffin lid slowing down, finally stopping. She crossed her hands over her chest. Her whole body shook, the way his mom’s did when she was crying hard but silently. Then the girl’s eyes closed, and she lay still.

  Billy didn’t know what to make of this, but he had to let her out—she wasn’t a tropical fish, that much was clear, she wanted out. He opened his bag, took out the red toolbox, opened it, and removed a claw hammer. He held it a little uncertainly. If he smashed the side of the casket, the whole top part might fall on top of the girl. But if he broke the top, bits of glass would shower down on her. Well, he couldn’t do anything else—he had to break it somewhere. He lifted the hammer over the center of the casket lid, and brought it down as hard as he could.

  The hammer bounced.

  Billy stepped back, frowning. It had seemed so easy when he’d imagined it. Why didn’t it work? He went back to the toolbox, rummaging through it. A protractor. A socket wrench. Needlenose pliers. A chalk line reel—his dad used to joke that it was used for drawing the lines on elf baseball fields, but Billy didn’t know what it was really for. A paint-stained calculator. His fingers closed on a Phillips screwdriver—what his dad called a “starhead” screwdriver—and he smiled. His dad had taught him how to chop wood, and shown him how wedges worked. Sometimes you couldn’t get a log to split just by driving the ax in. So you set a wedge, and hit the wedge with a hammer, and that split the log. A glass casket wasn’t the same as a log, and a screwdriver was no wedge, but it might be close enough.

  Billy set the point of the screwdriver on the beveled edge of the casket, reasoning that the glass would be thinner at that point, and easier to break. He held the screwdriver in place, lifted the hammer, and hit the end of the screwdriver handle.

  The glass splintered, fine lines spreading out from the point of impact. Billy hooted with pleasure. The girl stirred a little, her white hands moving, fluttering like moths. Billy moved the screwdriver farther down the seam and repeated the process. He hummed to himself as he worked his way around the edge of the coffin, tapping his screwdriver, smiling every time at the cracking sound. He’d done one whole side and gotten halfway up the other when he looked back at the girl.

  Her eyes were open, staring at him. “Can you see me?” he asked.

  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... fo
r 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.