Heart in the Woods
I was done sharing my life with another. No more girlfriends, no more dogs. Not even a goldfish. They weren’t worth the heartache.
Alone, I didn’t wake anyone when I dragged myself out the door at 4:15 am. I didn’t want to go to my friend’s animal refuge to help with its annual kids-with-cancer day camp. The event featured too many sad stories and brought back too many memories of the pain childhood can hold. But I’d promised Chris I’d help as usual, and a man’s got to keep his promises.
The Pennsylvania woods were quiet as I drove, just the way I liked them. I’d had enough nights in the hospital where some machine was always beeping and some nurse’s shoes were always squeaking. That’s what happens when you’re born with congenital heart defects. So, yeah, I liked my quiet.
Dawn was breaking ten minutes later as I pulled into the gravel drive to Semper Sanctuary, Chris’s animal refuge. He was standing outside the main gate, a hunting rifle over one shoulder, a medical kit shoved under the other.
Uh oh, what was going on?
“Zane!” Chris ran toward my truck. He’s a big man with an even bigger beard. Old ladies cross the street to avoid him, but mountain lions purr in his lap, and he’d do anything for anybody. He’d been my best friend since kindergarten, the closest thing I had to a brother. Now my almost-brother yanked the driver’s side door open. “I was about to call you.”
I spilled out of the truck, grabbing my emergency kit as I went. It was stuffed with both medical supplies--in case my heart conked out on me--and defensive supplies, including a silver cross, some iron nails, and a bag of sage. As an expert in the uncanny, I needed to be prepared. “What happened?”
Semper Sanctuary isn’t some place you take the family dog when you don’t want it anymore. Chris takes animals the humane society can’t handle: the lion chained in somebody’s backyard, the pet bear that’s had its teeth and claws removed, the monkey some lady dressed like a doll for twenty years. Damaged, all of them, and Chris worked hard to keep them safe.
Now he looked fit to spit nails. “Harvey was making a racket, so I came out, and some human-shaped thing was hauling him away.”
“Harvey’s gone?”
Harvey was the toothless old wolfdog who sunned himself under the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign by the visitor center. Curse the bastard who kept him solitary for fifteen years so he didn’t know how to interact with other wolfdogs. But it’s cute how the guy trained him to beg for Lebanon bologna, and the kids who visit the refuge adore him.
Thirty kids with cancer were coming at 9 am that morning. They’d be devastated if we lost Harvey.
Chris just nodded, but he was blinking back tears. “I went after him, but it was too dark. The thing that took him was about your size and shape, and it opened the iron lock on Harvey’s cage.” He sniffled. “What could it have been?”
“Well...” I ran through my mental list of local cryptozoology, but all the time I was thinking, I don’t want to get involved. I just came to make sandwiches and hand out stickers. Get me back to my quiet. It’s so much easier.
Still, I couldn’t help but be interested. Studying folklore and myths had been pure escapism for a kid whose heart could fink out at any moment, and I’d danced around the room when such geekery got me hired at the local history museum. I’d never dreamed that such creatures would become real or that I’d become a respected local expert.
So, despite the lure of the quiet, I went to the open cage door. Now that it was light out, capuchins and macaques chattered from the nearby monkey corner, and acres away, a lion roared. The air was crisp, and dew coated my sneakers. The June sun would dry them quick enough.
A seven-foot fence surrounded the brushy enclosure. In the back was a wooden shelter with a water trough. On the left wall, the hex sign showed a blue eight-pointed star with red and yellow stylized tulips. Normally it was a welcome sign for visitors. Now it felt too cheery, too bright.
“Broke right through the lock,” I muttered. Any hooligan could have smashed it, but many uncanny creatures weren’t clever with human things, and several were downright allergic to iron. “We’re a little too far south for a wendigo, and they usually go for humans. I wonder--”
I lifted the lock from the grass and sniffed, but there was no odor. “Okay, so nothing like what got Rosie and Sammi.”
That thing had been a giant red-eyed boar that stunk of sulfur. It had burrowed under a red fox enclosure and grabbed the two females. Chris had put three silver bullets in its brain before it died.
“Not what got Sweetie and George, neither,” Chris said.
Otherwise we would have found Harvey lying dead, drained of blood. We never found out what killed the two sun bears. Either the crosses and garlic we put up drove it away, or it just moved on.
“You said it was human-shaped, my size. What else did it look like?”
Chris shook his head. “It was too dark. I just saw it running--hey!”
He pointed at a partial print with the toe of his sneaker. “A boot print, but not modern. See those imprints from handmade nails in the sole? Nothing like that’s been used in two hundred years.”
“Two hundred years...”
Normally I don’t care what lives in these woods. Things that aren’t strictly natural have as much right to their space as we do, but I draw the line when something comes hunting defenseless animals. Especially when it should have been long dead.
“Old Mad Jack,” I whispered.
Chris shook his head, confused. He hadn’t tracked down every old timer to hear the local legends.
“In the 1700s, a mountain man lived up this way. He went crazy when his wife left him for another man. He went to their cabin, stabbed himself in the chest, and tried to rip out his own heart to give her. For years after that, pets and livestock went missing. People would find them with their chests torn open. Mad Jack was looking for a heart to give his wife.”
“Geez,” Chris swore. He clutched his rifle. “Let’s go. It’s light enough to track.”
Reflexively, I stepped back and crossed my hands over my heart for its protection.
Chris stared. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I--”
“How am I supposed to stop this guy without you?”
“Find the talisman that’s keeping him here and destroy it.”
“What’s it look like?”
“Could be anything,” I admitted. “It’s different for different creatures.”
“You’ll know better than me.” True. “Come on, Harvey could be getting butchered right now.”
I should go. But staying there would be safer, easier for medics to reach me if something happened to my heart.
As if he guessed my thoughts, Chris whistled low. “She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”
She was my last girlfriend, whose name I don’t repeat. I’d thought my heart would be fine that day in March when I helped move her newly widowed mother into assisted living. I’d done that kind of thing before, and I’d been careful--no heavy boxes, no running up stairs. Still I’d gotten dizzy carrying a microwave and woke up in the emergency room, my blood pressure sky high. Three days later I was discharged with more prescriptions for my pharmacopeia. Worse, she never visited, and when I got home, she’d taken all her stuff, even Rex. I was too much trouble, she said.
“Look.” Chris leaned over so we were eye level. “Your doc cleared you to resume all activities. Isolating yourself isn’t good, and it sure won’t help Harvey. So come on.” He took off across the parking lot, toward the woods on the other side.
Of course he was right. I did need to get out more. But couldn’t I take baby steps back into the world?
“Come on!” Chris hollered, waving me toward him.
No baby steps, dang it. Knowing I’d regret it, I hefted my emergency kit over my shoulder and jogged after Chris.
And found the quiet I’d wanted, but not in a good way.
This time of the morning, birds should’ve been belting in the treetops and squirrels rustling under the mountain laurel. Not now. Not a thing was moving except Chris and me. When I caught up with him, he gave a thumbs up, but his lips were tight, no doubt as freaked as I was. We walked as quietly as possible, Chris following a trail of footprints and broken twigs. I peered over my shoulder every other step.
Until we headed uphill, and I started panting. Chris, good friend that he was, stopped.
I didn’t have breath to thank him, or to grumble that I should’ve stayed behind. I leaned against a tree and sucked in air.
Yeah, low blood oxygen. Another gift of my born-wrong heart. Lucky me.
I was so busy wheezing that it took a minute to realize Chris hadn’t stopped merely for my benefit. He paced a few steps, surveyed the ground, paced a few more.
“Uh, Chris?” I asked when I could. “Lost the trail?”
He scowled and nodded.
Scanning bushes and the ground was something I could do, but first I needed to check I was all right. I pulled the pulse oximeter from my emergency kit. Yes, I carry a pulse oximeter. It’s something you do when your heart’s not plumbed like everybody else’s.
I clipped it to the tip of my index finger, confirmed my O2 was back to acceptable levels. As I stowed the meter back in my kit, I spied an unsavory sight behind a nearby tree.
“Chris! Over here!”
He came. His eyes lit up, and he bent low to investigate a scat pile.
“Harvey’s. Jack tied him here for a bit.” He fingered vines knotted around the tree trunk. “Wonder why.”
“Don’t know. At least he’s still alive.” It was almost 6 am. Three hours till the kiddies came.
Chris pointed to another broken twig, and we plunged back into the hunt. Except we didn’t go as fast as before. That was Chris, matching the pace to what I could handle, watching out for me. It was second nature for him--taking care of me was how he’d learned to care for other things.
We pushed on, over a trickling stream and around the modern art that was the exposed roots of a toppled tree. The air was cooler here in the deep forest, the birds just as quiet. One called, high and twittery, then stopped. It seemed a warning.
The broken twigs stood out here, prominent enough that even I could see them. We’d followed them for maybe two minutes when Chris stopped.
He fingered a twig, looked back the way we’d come, looked at the upcoming trees with their broken bits. He fingered the twig in front of him.
“What?” I whispered. I only puffed a little.
“All broken the same.”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant. “This trail was planted?”
“Yup. False lead.”
“Huh. So Mad Jack isn’t so mad?”
“Scary thought. He knows we’re coming.”
Chris led me back to the tree where I’d wheezed. While he scouted for the real trail, I pulled the cross, nails, and sage from my kit. I strung them on the chain for the cross and hung it around my neck, over my t-shirt. Undead and smart. I didn’t like that combination. Now we knew what Mad Jack had done while Harvey was tied here.
“This way.” Chris pointed about forty-five degrees left of where we’d been headed. “That jive with what you know?”
“He’s supposed to haunt the cabin where he died, but I don’t know where that is, so sure.”
We trekked up one silent hill and down another, while I huffed and puffed and the hair rose on my neck. I wondered how much trouble we were walking into. No one knew why ghosts, monsters, and fairies were walking abroad suddenly. Was it global warming? Fracking? A manifestation of the collective unconscious? Just then it didn’t matter. What mattered was who would be cleverer--us or Jack.
Then I saw the cat.
“Chris!” I hissed. I pointed. My hand shook.
For anyone who doesn’t have experience with feral cats, a word: they are about as far from cute and fluffy as you can get. They are mean, tough buggers who know humans are as likely to shoot them as feed them. This means they run when they see you.
Except this one didn’t. This cat staggered through the ferns on our right. The dappled sun played over its tabby coat, camouflaging it even though it was moving. It heaved itself forward, heading straight toward us. The gaping wounds in its chest stood out clearly against its fur.
“You poor thing.” Chris stepped toward the cat, hands up, murmuring quietly.
It screamed, a hideous yowl.
Chris backed up. The cat froze, staring with its yellow eyes. Its mouth was open, panting, a pose I sympathized with.
“Dang it,” Chris whispered. “We don’t have time for this.”
“We can’t leave it here!” It shocked me that he would say that, Harvey or no.
“It’s 6:30. We’ve spent too much time already.”
Because of me. “Let me try.” I remembered what it was like to be small and hurting from a wounded chest, and I wasn’t about to give up on this panting cat.
Chris scowled at his watch, at the cat, then me. He shooed me forward as I knew he would. “Make it quick.”
So I stepped toward the cat. Its lips pulled back, canines exposed, and I hoped it lacked the strength to scratch me. I inched forward, hunching over to appear smaller. I remembered how everything seemed so big when I was in pain.
Here’s the thing: animals like me. Small children do too, though that’s not the point right now. Maybe the pharmaceuticals in my blood make me smell different, or maybe it’s that my heartbeat doesn’t sound normal. Whatever the reason, this cat, like so many critters before it, let me come close.
Relieved that it did, I dropped to my knees and examined its chest. There was no smell, no discoloration. The cat itself was ragged--torn ears, too thin--what I’d expect from a feral. But the wounds were fresh, the blood matting its fur still glistening.
I blinked slowly to let it know I meant no harm. When it blinked back, I reached out first one hand then the other. It shivered, sensing what was coming, but it let me gather it up in my arms.
It shouldn’t have. No matter how much animals like me, no feral cat should have let me pick it up like that. Was it newly feral, dumped on the road by some schmuck of an owner?
It held so still as I walked. I worried what that meant and tried not to cradle it too tightly.
Chris had already opened the medical kit he’d brought for Harvey. I knelt down, ready to hold the cat as best I could while Chris did his rescue-thing. Then I realized what was so creepy about the damage to its chest.
“Uh, Chris, you see these wounds?”
“Nasty things.” He pulled on latex gloves. “Hold it still.”
“You see what design they make?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look.”
The cat shivered but held still as I held it, and Chris gently probed the wounds. He frowned, bent nearly double so he could peer at its chest.
“I don’t--oh.” He sat back on his heels, his face white.
“There’s a knife cut,” I said, “but the rest--they make a pattern of thumb and fingers. Something tried to tear out its chest.”
He nodded, gaping. Now he was the one breathing heavy.
I probably shouldn’t have been as calm as I was, but I had a shivering cat on my lap, and I didn’t want to freak out with it there. Staying calm was one thing I could do.
“Why use both a knife and bare hand?” I asked.
Chris shook his head. He kept shaking it, as if he could jiggle understanding into his head, even as he wrapped a dressing over the cat’s chest.
Once he’d finished, he said, “The hand came first, then the knife. Maybe the cat fought too hard, so Jack resorted to a knife. Only it escaped?”
I stroked the cat between its ears, hoping this idea was true. I liked to think it was a fighter. “You sure Jack did this?”
“You know something else attacking pets for their hearts?”
I shook my head. “So he went after Harvey because Puss in Boots here got away?”
“Seems like. Wish I knew why. Lots of dogs in the valley he could’ve snatched easier.”
“Your wolves were loud last night. Even I heard them. He probably came to investigate but the electric fence was too much. Harvey was easier pickings.”
Chris pressed his lips together. “Bastard.” He stood, stripped off his gloves. Fear wasn’t an emotion that slowed him for long. “Let’s get Harvey before I have to patch him up, too.”
I struggled to my feet, still holding Boots. “Ok.”
Chris stared at me, but I wasn’t leaving Boots behind.
“Let’s go,” I said.
He nodded, and off we went, following the trail of blood Boots had left. She huddled in my arms, claws snagging my t-shirt, holding on for dear life. I wanted to talk to her, tell her everything would be all right, but I wasn’t about to lie to an animal that had already been abandoned and abused.
We went up, Boots just light enough in my arms, until Chris flattened himself in front of me. I went down too, twisting so I wouldn’t hurt Boots. Leaves crunched, and I winced at the sound.
Chris crawled to look over the lip of the hill. Panting, I set Boots in a pile of leaves for safety and crawled over to see what Chris saw.
It could have been any other hollow in these forests. The hill swept down into a flat expanse of grass and rushes. A creek babbled through it, and fallen trees made a dense brush pile on the far side. Nearer to us, almost in the trees, stood the tumbled-down ruins of a cottage: moldering wooden beams, lichen-covered chimney, stone foundations. I could almost imagine the lovers watching in horror as Jack bled out on their dirt floor.
I thought the ruins had made Chris drop. Then I saw Harvey tied to the brush pile. He was alive and whole, but cringing, his stomach pressed to the ground, trying to hide under the brush.
I wanted to hide, too. As great as it was to find Harvey alive, this meant Jack had gotten interrupted in his heart harvesting again. So where was he?
Chris tapped my arm. He made a circling motion with his finger, ending by pointing at Harvey and back the way we’d come.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to circle down to rescue the wolfdog and leave while Chris did what? Stake out the clearing by himself and wait for Jack to show? I had made it this far. My heart hadn’t finked out on my yet. I wasn’t going to leave Chris to face Jack by himself. Besides, we didn’t have time to wait. It was going on 7 am. We’d have to hustle to get back by 9.
With the boar from hell, our plan had been simple but crude: I distracted the hellspawn while Chris crept up behind and shot it. The plan worked reasonably well, except the overgrown swine refused to die with only one bullet to the head. Still, we were both alive, and the pig was not, and I only had one scar to show for it.
I couldn’t distract Jack this time, since I was sure he knew we were there. Wasn’t that why he’d tied Harvey out as bait? So we had to draw him out. There was no way I was using Boots as bait. And I’d be a fool to offer myself. So we had to draw him out another way.
The legends of Mad Jack were scarce on details. Still, two things seemed true: his obsession with his wife, and his ties to this cabin. His wife was long dead, but the cabin was right in front of us. That gave me a bad idea...
“Let’s push the chimney over,” I whispered.
“Why?”
“Jack’s tied to this place. If we threaten it, he’ll have to show.”
Chris nodded. “So the cabin’s his talisman?”
“Probably. It’s awfully big for one, but there’s nothing else that fits, and the chimney’s in mighty fine shape for being two hundred years old. Maybe he’s tending it.”
“What happens if we wreck the chimney, and he keeps going?”
“Shoot him. As many bullets as you got.”
“Got it.”
Rifle in hand, Chris led the way through the trees to the edge of the cabin. Boots opened her mouth in a silent meow as we left, but she stayed put. Smart cat.
It was slow going, stopping at every sound, jumping at every movement. Why wasn’t Jack showing himself? Was he waiting for us to make a mistake? My watch ticked closer to 7 am.
We paused in the line of trees behind the chimney. The forest had grown up since the lovers stayed here, but the trees had never overtaken the house, as if scared to get too close. I hesitated to take those two or three steps out of the tree line. But I had to. Chris must keep both hands on his gun.
Heart, don’t fail me now, I prayed. I stepped out. The chimney stood taller than I was, a looming gray obelisk, and now that I was beside it, I doubted my plan. Could I push any of it over?
I braced my hands against the uppermost stones, mentally crossed my fingers, and pushed. And discovered that the mortar was like sand, crumbly. The top few stones toppled down onto the grass.
Well, that was easy. Buoyed, I set my palms against the next set of stones.
“Zane!” Chris’s voice sliced the air.
Something whipped past my left ear and thunked into the tree behind me. A knife, the blade the size of my hand.
My breath hitched. My knees turned watery as birch beer.
Crack.
Chris had fired. On the far side of the cabin, Mad Jack flinched. He’d been human once, and he was still human shaped, but so thin that muscle had a hard time fitting over bone. Cracked skin stretched over his face and hands, and tufts of black hair jutted from his skull. He wore gray rags and boots that showed more dirt than leather. In the center of his chest was a jagged hole.
I saw all that, plus the new hole that opened in his right cheekbone from Chris’s shot. Bits of skin went flying, and I cheered silently. Our plan was working.
Except he didn’t fall, didn’t flinch. Mad Jack bared his teeth, his cheek gaping, and picked up a foundation stone the size of my head. He hurled it at Chris.
“Move!” Chris got off one more shot, missed, ducked, and then we were both scrambling back as Jack came for us, surprisingly fast.
I dodged around the chimney, desperately hoping to draw him away from Chris. “Hey!” I yelled.
That had worked with the demon-spawn pig, but Jack yanked the rifle from Chris’s hands. Without turning his head, he threw it in the creek.
Chris backed up, but Jack had him round the wrist. He screamed and grabbed Jack above his nose, grounding his fingers into the dried-up bits of Jack’s eyes.
I know a surfer that fought off a great white by stabbing it in the eye. A few years ago, a news report said a hiker fought off a mountain lion that way.
Jack merely hissed. He grabbed Chris round the neck. Chris gurgled and scrabbled, reaching for the hole in Jack’s chest, but Jack batted his hands away, squeezed harder. Chris’s face turned red.
“Hey!” I screamed. I grabbed the knife in the tree, but it was stuck fast. So I heaved up a fallen rock. As hard as I could, I bashed it against the back of Jack’s head.
He took a step forward. That was all. As I stared, horrified, he gripped Chris round the neck with his other hand, too. His fingers dug in.
Chris made horrible choking sounds. He pummeled Jack’s hands, but it was like pounding death itself. His eyes pleaded with me.
I clutched the stone, ready to hit again, but what good would that do? Chris didn’t need me knocking Jack forward another step.
So I dropped the rock and dashed to the chimney. Jack had tried to stop me before when I toppled part of it. Maybe it really was his talisman.
I pushed another layer of rocks from the top. They thudded to earth.
Jack bellowed. He whirled, but I was already knocking more over, pushing desperately because I was getting tired. The third and fourth layers ground forward. I prayed to anything that would listen that they would totter.
I leaned all my strength against the chimney. With a scream, I shoved. The stones teetered and fell, smashing into the ground. How many more did I need to push before Jack would stop? Would destroying the chimney truly end him or just make him angrier?
No time to guess. I spun.
Jack was nearly on me. He had dropped Chris, who was climbing painfully to his feet, gulping in air. I had a moment to see Jack’s withered, black eyes, his shattered cheekbone, the knife back in his hand.
I’m not an athletic man. I was already close to my limit, my heart beating painfully in my chest. No way I could outrun him or fight back.
So I pulled up my shirt to reveal my zipper scar. “Want a heart? You’ve never seen one like mine.”
Jack paused, just for an instant, no doubt confused by something offering him a heart.
The instant was enough. As Jack raised his knife, a tabby streak launched herself at him. She was a hissing, spitting bundle of teeth and claws and fury.
Jack roared. He seized her with both hands, but she latched on with four feet and teeth. The bandage around her chest showed bright red.
He’d kill her, and I wouldn’t let him.
Chris pushed past me. He shoved against the chimney, toppling a pile of rocks.
Jack bellowed. He yanked Boots in both hands and threw. She arched overhead and slammed into the grass halfway across the clearing. She did not get up.
My throat closed. But I’d seen something when Chris pushed over the stones: something glinting in newly exposed dirt at the base of the chimney.
I grabbed it: a locket. Grimy, weathered, but undeniably a lady’s glass locket. Deliberately thrown into the fire to spite a jealous husband? Or flung away in horror while he lay dying? I’d never know, but I could imagine Jack’s heart-blood seeping into the locket, staining the picture inside, binding his life into glass and silver. This was why Jack couldn’t rest, why he kept bringing hearts for a long dead woman. He wasn’t tied to the chimney but to what it had kept hidden--this locket.
Losing a lady could do funny things to a man. But there came a time to let her go.
When I grabbed the locket, Jack’s dead eyes bulged. He lunged at me, his right hand outstretched.
With the last of my strength, I smashed the locket against the stones. It shattered in my palm.
Jack wailed, a cry of such grief it chilled my spine. Before the sound faded, he collapsed into dust.
I sat down hard. My body felt like lead, and I had to wrap my arms around my chest, trying to catch my breath, trying to tamp down the feel of shattered love in my hands. The glass had sliced my palm, my blood warm and sticky.
Chris bent down beside me. “You okay?”
I nodded. I clenched my fist tight so he wouldn’t see it. “Check the fur balls.”
He raced into the hollow. By the time I made my way down on legs like jelly, he’d untied Harvey and had Boots swishing her tail with annoyance.
“They’re okay?” I asked.
“The cat’s going to need stitches, but she should live.”
I sat down again, in relief. She let me pick her up. “Thank you,” I whispered, and she rubbed her nose against my chin, purring. It was a thin, weak purr, but a purr, and that sound kept me going as Chris bandaged my hand and led me on the long slog back to Semper Sanctuary. By 8:47 when we got there, I was so spent black spots danced before my eyes. It barely registered when someone took Boots out of my arms. Another volunteer drove me the ten minutes home, with a promise to drop my truck off after the camp kids left. I had a moment of black guilt over not staying to help, but a body’s got its limits. At least we’d brought Harvey home.
I slept all day and was sitting on my back porch when a cat slunk into my yard. I didn’t think much of it, with all the poor dumped cats that crossed my property. A downside to my quiet cabin in the country.
This cat slunk closer, its tail down, cautious, bandages wrapped around her chest.
“Um, hello.” I put my book aside. “What are you doing here?”
She climbed the porch steps and into my lap. After a moment of kneading my legs, she curled up, purring.
“Um, shouldn’t you be back at Semper, recuperating?” The staff would never have released her back into the wild so soon. She must have escaped before they could transfer her to a pet shelter. Puss in Boots indeed.
She ignored me with the blithe indifference only a cat can manage.
“I’m not looking for someone new in my life,” I said. “Never know when my ticker’s going to conk out, and then what’d happen to you?”
She flicked her tail, brushing aside my protests.
I couldn’t blame her. I’d bested a monster and lived to tell about it. Refusing to adopt a pet because my heart would someday fail sounded stupid even to my ears.
“I’m going to call Chris, let him know you’re here.”
She purred on, secure in my arms.