Read Online The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart by Lauren DeStefano - Free Book Online Page A

to her—much closer than usual. Even as Marybeth sat onthe bottom step and read for hours, Lionel napped curled by her feet. Odd as it was, she didn’t want to discourage them. Closeness of that sort was rare enough for people who had families, and rarer still for those who didn’t.
    Perhaps it was those supernatural books that had frightened them, Mrs. Mannerd had thought. It was the only explanation.
    â€œI suppose the walk would do you some good,” Mrs. Mannerd said. “But wear thick socks, and no more scary books. Pick something nice this time, would you?”
    â€œYes, Mrs. Mannerd,” they said together.
    Dutifully, they buttoned their wool coats to their chins, pulled on their boots, and left the house with their library books under their arms.
    Mrs. Mannerd stood at the storm door and watched them walk down the dirt driveway. Lionel stooped to bite the head off a dandelion. Even on his best behavior, he would always be just a little bit wild.

CHAPTER
    9
    â€œCan you feel it now?” Lionel asked. He was talking about the blue creature’s heartbeat.
    â€œYes,” Marybeth said. “I couldn’t this morning, but it started up when we left the house.”
    They had been walking up the road for a quarter mile before the graveyard began to show itself in the distance, like a tiny abandoned city that would never again be inhabited.
    The heart sank in Marybeth’s chest and disappeared. She staggered when she felt it stop. “It’s all right,” she told it, and walked ahead of Lionel. “Look. See? There’s nothing that can hurt you in there.”
    The older ones would hold their breath when they passed the graveyard. They told Marybeth and Lionel thatif they dared to breathe as the car rolled past, the ghosts would come to their beds at night and drag them to an empty grave and bury them alive.
    But Marybeth wasn’t afraid of the graveyard. Death itself had never startled her. Her clearest memory of her father had taken place in a graveyard. It was a clear memory, much clearer than a photograph or even the oil painting of Mr. and Mrs. Mannerd that hung in the dining room.
    She had been three years old, or maybe four. She had been picking the dandelions and buttercups that grew wild in the grass, gathering them in her pocket. Her father asked if he could hold them, and then he placed them on a headstone and told her, “Say hello to your old mom.”
    â€œWhy’s she down there?” Marybeth had asked him.
    â€œYou always put people in the ground when they die,” he had said. “The soul is much lighter than the skin and bones. You bury them in the dirt so that they don’t float away like a balloon. They just sleep peaceful instead.”
    Though she was nine years old now, and she knew that death was not the same as sleep, she still believed there was truth in what her father had said. Perhaps the blue creature’s spirit had floated up from its grave and gotten lost.
    Lionel ran to catch up with Marybeth. They were at the graveyard’s entrance now. A low stone fence bordered it, with a high rusty gate emblazoned with iron roses.
    Marybeth took a deep breath.
Here goes nothing
, she thought.
    The graveyard was more than a hundred years old, and the only one in walking distance, so they both hoped this would work. Even if they weren’t sure what they were doing exactly.
    Lionel reached for her hand, and Marybeth took his. She hadn’t hissed at him in days, and Lionel sensed that the blue creature was coming to trust him. And this was a good thing, because at the sight of all those headstones, Marybeth’s eyes flashed blue.
    Some of the headstones had fallen to ruin, cracked, chipped, and neglected, because anyone who might have visited them had long since died. Others were newer, with fresh flowers tied with ribbon, letters to the dead tucked in the grass.
    If the blue spirit’s body was buried here, she