Page 133 of A Heart So Haunted
“Landry,” Hadrian choked.
I stood and whirled. He grabbed the back of the closest chair with one hand, the other grabbing at his chest. Right over his heart.
“Wait—No, sit down. What’s wrong? What hurts?”Heart attack, my first thought blared, just like Aunt Denny, but I knew better.
The blood around his chest bloomed like an opening morning glory. It was thick, soaked through the fabric before I scrambled over to him, that’s how much there was. It painted his shirt, turned the ivory cotton to a thick maroon. I started with the buttons at his neck, ripped the tail of his shirt from his trousers. A few buttons popped away.
“What a time to undress me,” he said, pained. Both hands grasped the back of the chair.
“This isn’t funny.” My voice wavered. This wasn’t funny at all.
It was happening—I knew it. The air turned heady, sharp with the scent of blood as I yanked the shirt off his arms, down his back. Earth tangled with it, soil, musk.Dust.
The smell of an old house.
“It hurts,” he choked.
I balled up the shirt and tried to turn him. Blood streaked his skin, my fingers, seeped into the beds of my nails and the crevices of my palms. It trickled down to his trousers, soaked into the heavy fabric of his pants.
“Sit,” I whispered. My words grew soggy, like I was drowning. Maybe I was drowning. “Let me try and stop it—I can use your shirt—”
“There’s no point, Landry, and you know it,” he urged. He didn’t sit, no matter how I pushed at his shoulders. He just stood there, bent over the back of the chair as if it pained him to straighten. He was too tall, and my hands shook too much. I was like a fluttering moth around a dying animal, a mere nuisance and nothing more.
I was a faint blip in his decades of existence—because it was ending. The remains were here, broken, in my pockets.
A moth couldn’t save a beast. All it could do was watch.
I wedged myself between him and the chair, shirt balled at the ready anyway. The scar that had looked so healed before, purpled and raised, had flattened—but the center of his scar had changed. It hung open, revealing the thickest sliver of heart beneath. And so, so much blood. It poured in streams, and any other time I might have balked, might have stepped away when I saw it drip to the floor, but I didn’t.
Because the blood wasn’t evaporating like it had before.
It hit the floor in rhythmic splats. A sink left on, dripping into the basin.Tap, tap, tap.
The last of the grandfather clock chimes echoed through the house. That urgency I’d felt the night I’d heard him crying, like a pressure on my sternum, filled the room, like water rising in a flood. Soon, it would reach my neck, my mouth, cover my nose and my ears. It would wash everything away.
“At least let me try,” I muttered. Tears trickled over my mouth. Salt coated my tongue. “Please.The blood is—”
“Real,” he gasped. Hot air rushed over my cheek. “It’s real. I cannot—there is a pain—” He twitched. His shoulder hiked to his ear, his head bent in. He hissed. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
I hesitated a moment too long.
His jaw cracked open. A monstrous sound rumbled from his chest. I pressed the shirt to his wound anyway, spittle bubbling around my lips.
“Hadrian, please.Please.”
What was I asking him to do? Whatcouldhe do?
His shoulders rolled to straighten. He released the chair, taking his body heat with it—too hot. A flush rose up his neck, over his cheeks. The lively warmth that once made him look healthy now turned feverish.
My eyes widened in horror as his neck rolled. Lumps, like bones changing, emerged beneath his skin. Rose and fell with sickening, wet sounds. I stepped back, straight into the chair behind me.
“I think”—he winced as he opened his mouth, the teeth along his bottom jaw lengthening, sharpening, shifting—“my time is up.”
I reached forward. Stopped. Started again. “I need to help you—f-find s-s-something.”
“No.”
He snarled at my words, all creature. He blinked and his eyes clicked to a ghastly yellow, so bright it reminded me of melted sunlight.
