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

didn’t know where to begin. She didn’t know if the blue spirit had died a hundred years ago, or two hundred, or just last month.
    She walked slowly through the rows of headstones.
    Lionel walked behind her at a cautious distance, and Marybeth could feel a low growl in her throat that she didn’t make. The blue creature was still uncertain about Lionel, but it was coming around to him. Still, there was this fear that Marybeth could feel, as though anyone couldbe a threat. Even a boy with messy hair who sometimes thought he was a coyote, or a monkey, or a fox.
    When the panic began to bubble inside her, it started deep in her stomach. Sometimes the fear made her hide when the doorbell rang, or when the older ones got too close.
    Marybeth did her best to calm it. She hummed music in her head, or she concentrated hard on the lines of her favorite poems. She told jokes.
    Sometimes it worked, and the blue creature went to sleep inside her skin. But sometimes the fear was unlike anything Marybeth had ever known. Worse than being locked in the closet or missing an answer on a test.
    â€œWe could try over here,” Lionel said.
    His voice was far away, as though Marybeth were hearing it from underwater. She shook her head, trying to clear away the water rushing through her ears, but it only got worse.
    The gravestones blurred first, and then everything became a blur. The blue creature darted between her bones, trapped in her rib cage like a fish swimming frantically in a bowl. It was trying to push her out of the graveyard. Wrong, it was telling her. This place was all wrong.
    In all the frenzy, she could see Lionel’s worried face. She knew he was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. All she could hear was a voice in her mind telling her that this place was wrong, wrong, wrong.
    She tried to tell the blue creature to be calm. She tried to hum. But it wouldn’t listen.
    Lionel had crouched low to the ground, and he approached cautiously. The blue creature snarled.
    It took over her legs, and she ran from the graveyard, only distantly aware of the road beneath her feet, her breathing hard, her lungs aching. The worst part about this surge of panic was that it dulled her senses. She had no control of her arms and legs, and everything appeared as though underwater.
    From somewhere very far away, she heard Lionel cry out, and she saw the car coming toward her, and felt something swoop her out of the way.
    â€œHey there,” an unfamiliar voice said. “You’ve gotta be more careful.”
    Marybeth, her eyes glowing blue, scrambled behind Lionel.
    And at last, feeling safe, the blue creature subsided.
    When her vision came into focus, she saw a man standing at the edge of the road. His face and clothes were smeared with dirt.
    â€œThe road’s no place to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” the man said.
    Lionel was finding it difficult to act like a human. He wanted to growl or hiss, to protect both Marybeth and her secret.
    It was Marybeth who spoke first. “Yes, sorry, we’ll try to be more careful.”
    Lionel was grateful that at least she knew how to talk to people. That even with this blue creature and its erratic behavior, she could still convince adults that they were just two normal children playing where they ought not to have been.
    â€œIsn’t your mother nearby?” the man asked. Now that Marybeth could see him clearly, there was nothing intimidating about him. He hardly looked much bigger than some of the older ones. “Does she know you’re playing around outside a graveyard?”
    Lionel bit back a growl. The only things more unnerving than people were people that asked questions.
    â€œShe isn’t here,” Marybeth said. “We didn’t come here to play. We were visiting a grave.”
    â€œGo on, then,” the man said. “But be calm about it. Just because these folks are dead doesn’t mean