Heart Murmurs (19 page)

****

Adrenaline pumps in short, vivid bursts from my head, leaving me dizzy as we descend into the hole.

“Focus, Mia. Watch everything around you. Put all your fears away. Right now is all that matters.” His voice is soothing, calming like a layer of cool cotton draped against my raw thoughts.

My fingers hold fast to a projecting root, and I dangle there for a long second, till I release it. The falling. It's too long. The fact I'm thinking it's too long makes it too long.

I'm weightless, tumbling, head over feet, again and again.

I scream and bite through my lip.

My heart erupts in a strong, reassuring beat.

I have powers here.

I shake my head, extend my arms wide as the pyrotechnics flare.

It lights the sides of the tunnel, and something odd catches my eye.

Faces, in varying degrees of contortion and terror, appear in the brambles like hidden pictures.

My body slows. I hit the dirt and a rush of air whooshes out of my lungs. I cough, patting my body for injuries.

Morgan smacks down beside me, hitting much harder.

“Uh!” He rolls on his side, clutching his ribs.

I shoot to sitting. “Are you alright?”

“Just give me a minute.”

I hear a shuffling. Slow at first, but gaining momentum.

Like a foot being dragged.

“I don't think you have a minute.”

I stand and feel a heartbeat beneath my feet. I leap away, trying to break the connection.

As soon as my feet hit the earth, it's there again. A steady thud-thud. I feel the rush of blood through its veins.

“What's wrong?” Morgan can't decide where to look. His eyes race from my face to the dragging sound in the dark.

“Under my feet. I feel a heartbeat!”

Then it shuffles into the light. A huge orangutan. It clutches an old-fashioned straight razor in its long fingers. A tuft of hair dangles from the end of it.

Morgan scrambles to his feet, clutching his ribs. “Oh Mia. This is bad.”

My legs tremble and I lock my knees to keep them from collapsing.

I've read about apes — their brute strength. He doesn't have a prayer. “It's the ape from Poe's book, Murder in the Rue Morgue.”

Morgan swallows. “You remember what happened, then?”

“Y-yes.” It killed two people. “And the heartbeat under the floor—”

“The Tell-Tale Heart.”

I feel the connection with Poe swell, filling my brain with melancholy. My vision blurs and suddenly my tongue feels laden with adhesive. I try to form words, but nothing will come out.

My heart feels as if it's squeezed by a thick, malignant depression. Its tentacles slither up to my brain, insisting life is futile. Give up and die.

I shake my head. “Morgan. I'm losing.” My voice sounds dead.

My heart stutters. I hear the whispers rising, trying to drown out Poe's presence.

Morgan is shifting his weight, back and forth, as the ape eyes him warily.

It lunges, swiping with the blade.

He whirls out of the way, panting.

I press myself against the wall.

Morgan's foot juts out, striking the ape's wrist. The blade flashes in the weird, green light as it cartwheels into the dark. The creature shrieks in rage. It leaps onto Morgan, tackling him to the ground.

I am going to lose him. Right now.

Anger cuts through the fog. I search my memory. One of my own books.

I hear it coming, flapping in the dark. A massive, stone gargoyle flies down the hole from the graveyard above. The ape barely acknowledges it, grasping a handful of Morgan's hair. It lifts his head, bludgeoning it off the floor with a sickening crunch.

I will the gargoyle; it swoops down, smacking itself into the ape's head. Its orange body catapults backwards, and Morgan scrambles up, swaying.

“Mia, we have to go.”

He limps to me and grasps my hand. We rush into the dark, toward the pinprick of light at the end.

****

“Are you still connected to him?” Morgan's voice is edged with panic.

“Yes, but it's faded. I can function now.”

“We're almost there.”

We reach the light and peer around the corner. One man stands guard by a ladder, similar to the one at Orchard House.

I stare at Morgan's face — his eye is swelling and a goose egg protrudes from the back of his head. “Are you going to be able…?”

He smiles. It's a little sad, and it scares me. “I don't know. But we have to try.”

Without warning, he charges into the light, launching himself at the guard. They roll into a pile of arms and legs across the rocky floor.

I bolt toward the ladder and scale it. I hear a series of ‘umps' and ‘oofs' and crunches as flesh is pummeled and bones break.

Morgan is getting his clock cleaned. I wince at the sounds and turn, too terrified to look.

The man leaps five-feet in the air, roundhouse kicking Morgan in the temple. He collapses, but immediately swipes with an arc of his leg, whisking the man's feet out from under him. Now they're both on the ground.

My stomach clenches, sending bile into my mouth.

I hear it coming. The orangutan.

I can just make it out in the dim backlight. It's barely alive — limping toward us. And it's found the razor again; its steely glint flashes with every uneven lope.

I raise my arm, sparks flying, palm up toward the ceiling. “Morgan! Get away from them!”

His eyes sweep and zero in on my outstretched hand. He grapples onto the ladder.

I bear down, and feel my skull vibrate clear to my jaw, clenching my teeth together.

The ceiling shakes as the sound of thunder echoes through the tunnel — repeating tens and tens of times as it bounces off the stony walls.

Stalactites shiver and break — hurtling downward like stony javelins.

One pierces the ape's shoulder, and his orange body crumples to his knees. Another pins the man's arm to the ground like a pin through a butterfly.

I turn my head, crying. I don't want any of this. I force my feet up and up till we reach the trapdoor — and I push it open.

****

He's waiting. Poe's crooked face, drenched with sweat, shrivels as I open the hatch. I quickly scramble up — preparing my mind for battle.

Or bottle, more like it.

A man, sketching a painting, looks aghast as I right myself to standing.

“Never mind her. Just keep painting.” His voice is deep, and dry somehow. As if this situation has sucked every bit of blood from his veins, leaving his vocal cords desiccated.

His melancholy hits, like a wave of nausea. I gag, my hand flying over my mouth.

My eyes flee to the top of Morgan's head, now surfacing from the hole.

“Oh, good. Seeing him will make this easier.” Poe's eyes narrow. He stands to pace in front of his roaring hearth.

The painter utters a tiny whimper.

“I'm paying you to paint, not whine!” Poe roars.

The man's head shoots back to the watercolor. I finally notice her lying there. His wife's corpse, laid out in a beautiful dress.

Morgan has made it to my side. His eyes travel everywhere — Poe to the exit, to the trapdoor. It makes me dizzy watching them.

Morgan buckles, grasping his head.

“What? Morgan what's wrong?” I instantly drop to his side.

He grits his teeth. “Mia, pay attention to him!”

“What's going on?”

“He — he's in my head, poking around.” Morgan grasps the sides of his head.

“I don't understand… you aren't a—”

Poe chuckles. “No, he's a courier. Somebody hasn't read the manual.” He tsk, tsk's. “I can see into his mind, but he cannot reciprocate. Literati's have certain liberties with the court.”

“Like cowardly searching my mind, to hurt Mia. Be a man.”

“Ah, where my wife is concerned, Mr. Kelly, I care not for rules, etiquette, or convention. I will do what I must.”

His eyes flash to mine. The connection rips into my head, searing images into my cortex.

Morgan. On the battlefield.

A shower of bullets blows past him. One rips a hole in his arm, and it drops from his rifle. He tries futilely to hold it up.

I see his calf. His courier birthmark. It was on his calf. The one that gets —

A blast erupts, taking out the back of his leg. He falls, face down into the sea of soldiers.

“No! Stop it! Stop it!”

The pain; my pain, Poe's pain, congeal into a suffocating blanket. I gasp as it wraps around my lungs, my heart.

Poe's eyes drift to the painter.

“Mi-a!” Morgan's shaking my shoulders. I feel his voice, urgent in my ear. “Don't let him in. Stop him. I'm here, right beside you. He's altering matter, altering your perception. You're powerful, more so than he.”

I feel his thick fingers clutching mine. Warm and calloused. I picture my lighted hands parting the curtain of pain.

I feel Poe invade, like a searching, mental finger rifling through every wrinkle, every memory in my brain.

I see Claire. She's falling from the cheer pyramid. Her neck snaps.

I wince. And jam my eyes shut — and picture a blank chalkboard. No images.

It shatters to a million fragments.

Beth. Massive belly swollen. Legs apart as the baby crowns. Her hair. Oh no, please, God, her hair.

Gray infects her hair from the roots to the ends, as her age seeps back. Edward drops to his knees, howling. The skin on her legs wrinkles, her muscles emaciate.

No, the baby. The baby will die.

I shake my head. “No, please, stop. Take me. Take me instead.”

“Mia!” Morgan shakes my shoulders, jarring my neck. But I'm trapped in the well of pain. Drowning in it.

My mother. I'm five. I'm hanging on her leg, wailing. “But you promised! You promised you'd be with me today!” She checks her watch, then her beeper.

She calls to our nanny. “Susie. Come get her.”

In a second the door is shut, and I'm bawling, crawling to the door, peeking out the mail slot. “Mommy!”

“He can only attack your mind, Mia. He can't alter time or matter outside the tunnels,” Morgan reassures me.

Poe laughs. “And you, Mr. should-be-Alcott, is it?”

Morgan's face flushes. “I prefer Kelly, my mother's name.”

Poe's smile is dark.

Morgan's body twitches like a marionette. His arms fly up to ward off some unseen danger. His face is smooth, but his eyes… they wrinkle and blink as he shakes his head. His lips spasm as another horror flashes in his mind.

“Shall we illuminate for Ms. Templeton?” Poe swipes his hand.

A mighty thunderclap erupts inside my head, and I see Morgan's thoughts.

I see… myself. Older. My own belly as swollen as Beth's previous image.

“Stop it. Stop it. She does not need to see this.” Morgan's voice is frantic.

Poe's expression is bleak. “Oh, but she does.”

An infant girl, in Morgan's arm. Hair grows from her scalp, disintegrates, and grows again as she howls her lamb-like cry.

Tears flow in a steady stream from Morgan's eyes, and I'm drenched in his utter helplessness.

“If you marry outside your class, there's no way to predict the outcome.” Poe stares at me, one eyebrow raised.

“M-Morgan? Is that the future?” My voice breaks on the last word.

Morgan furiously shakes his head, his hands fumbling for me. “No, love. It's just fears. My fears.” His tone rises with each word, “Please, please get out of my head!”

Morgan's face flushes, and he launches a chair at Poe's head.

Poe ducks, but it strikes his shoulder and he curses. Blackness.

I hear Morgan, stumbling toward Poe. Objects crash to the ground as he hurtles them blindly in Poe's direction.

I hear a bell.

Gooseflesh erupts all over my body and I shake. Something, somewhere in my memory shrinks away from the sound.

“It's a grave bell,” Poe says helpfully.

My mind explodes with images. They used to bury the dead with a string in the coffin. In case of accident. In case of being buried alive.

“You are a monster,” Morgan spits.

I feel around me, my fingers scrape against the close wood of a coffin.

I hear Morgan's panting. The clomp of his boots as he charges across the room. Poe gives a girlish shriek as he reaches him.

The imaginary coffin walls vanish, releasing me.

The room rushes back into view. I fly over to them, where Morgan has Poe in a headlock.

The trapdoor streaks across the room, stopping surreally at our feet.

Thump-thump-thump.

No, not now. Not now.

The trapdoor creaks open, and Morgan and I turn simultaneously.

Poe wriggles out of the chokehold.

An orange claw shoots out, grasping Morgan's ankle. It yanks and in three seconds he's gone. Back down the hole.

Poe gives me a sad smile. “You shouldn't have come. I don't wish to cause you the same pain. However, the council won't grant my pleas.”

Fear expands in my chest, and I pant.

I think of my heart. I think of Madelon. I admire her and love her and hate her all at once. Her courage taps out a steady beat in my ribcage.

Poe's smile is triumphant. “I must say, the rumors of your powers have been greatly exaggerated.”

I square my shoulders. I set a slideshow firmly in my mind. Morgan, Beth, Claire, even my parents. I let them repeat over and over.

I feel his depression, jabbing and darting, trying to find a way in.

His forehead is sweating, running into his eyes. He wipes it furiously.

Now, memories. Talismans of light to battle his dark, sinking thoughts.

Claire holding my hand when I got my first rejection, bringing me ice cream.

Beth. A million warm, happy dinners at the shop, instead of my cold house.

My mom and dad. Their proud faces as I walked down the aisle for my academic achievement award.

Morgan. My heart trips. Our first kiss. His warm, soft lips. His hands on my cheeks, caressing them.

“Ugh, enough!” Poe screams. His eyes dart back and forth like a trapped animal.

I raise my hand to him… and it sparkles.

Alarm widens his eyes. “How? You are outside the tunnels.”

I don't know how. But I better act fast.

I raise my arm to the grandfather clock behind him. Which is stopped. I feel a looming pressure around it. I slice it with my fingers, and it slips through them, feeling like sand.

The clock begins to tick, and chimes on the hour. Midnight.

“No!” Poe wails into his hands.

The painter sees his chance. “Mr. Poe, the portrait is complete.”

He flies out the door without a backward glance.

I raise my hands, spinning them round and round. Poe's body revolves in time. I think of a rope, and it appears, winding around his body, binding his legs.

Poe begins to cry, and remorse and empathy drench me. “I am so, so sorry for your loss. I will be needing your book.”

He takes one longing look at his wife, plucks it off the table, and hurtles it at my head.

My hand catches it without much help from my brain.

He falls and begins crawling toward his wife's corpse.

I hear the trapdoor rattle and I step back, clutching the Literati handbook to my chest. Morgan slips out. Two already-black eyes and a geyser from his nose, but alive.

The door rattles and shrinks, smaller and smaller and then disappears with a pop.

The floorboards remain.

Poe weeps openly, ignoring us.

“M-Mr. Poe. The Literati will summon you. For your trial.”

“What can they possibly do to me? Hmm?” He laughs bitterly. “Leave me.”

Morgan takes my hand and pulls me toward the tunnel. I hesitate, shaking my head.

Morgan turns his head to regard Poe, his voice full of empathy. “It's safe. He's harmless now. He will have the option to marry again, or pass on, to join her.”