Cancer eats the heart, p.1
Cancer Eats the Heart, page 1
caNCer
eaTs
The
heart
A novel by
pAUL JeSSUp
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Praise for Paul Jessup
For my Mom and Dad
who always supported my writing, even from a young age
thank you
ProLogUe: 1986
His parents had no faces, only sharp blobs torn in the places where their eyes and mouth should be. Toby Miles had no clue they’d died three nights before, suicide. They couldn’t take the pain of watching him slowly die from retinoblastoma. His mom blamed herself, for taking so long to get it checked out, and by then it was too late. It had spread to both of his eyes, crawled across his face, and nestled inside of his cheeks and his nose. Each day the doctors changed how long he had to live, and each day it grew shorter and shorter and shorter. Time was running out.
Even though he was blind, he kept seeing his parents, day in, day out. Right there, talking to him and walking about. They moved backwards, as if they were stuck behind an unseen mirror. And when they spoke, their words were harsh whispers.
His favorite nurse, Joanne, said that couldn’t be true. And even after she explained to him what happened (in the most gentlest way possible), they still showed up and hung around in the shadows. Dimmer and dimmer the world grew, while they shone brighter and brighter. What they said to him didn’t make sense. To watch out for the one who walks behind the Doors of Night. To resist his promises, and go gentle into the fire beyond life. Death, after all, his mother said, was not the end. They were proof of that.
He wanted to ask her what happened to their faces, and he wanted to know why they were naked in his hospital room. But he worried that it would somehow break the spell, and they would be gone from him if he asked too many questions. And he didn’t want to be alone in that dark once more. The dark was a lonely place, and he was a lonely boy who needed company. The nurses weren’t always around, and when they were they were so sad, it left him feeling way worse than he had before.
After all, he knew that he was the reason why they were sad. He was the reason why his parents had been sad, too, but they weren’t sad anymore. Maybe that was a good thing when it came to death, your sadness gets left behind. It was a thing of the physical world, and had no place outside of the body, and its messy chemical constructions. Anger would be gone, too, he assumed. And even though the rest of the world was sad at his condition, he was angry.
So much had been stolen from him, and it wasn’t fair nor right, nor good. Why did everyone else get to grow up, grow old, go to college, get a job, get a life and family of their own? All of that gone, taken from him by the great thief known as cancer. He raged in that darkness of his vision, fumed and hollered and shouted. Eventually, those emotional outbursts frightened away the ghosts of his parents. He threw things at the nurses and cursed, and even they came less and less each day. They did what they could and what they felt like they had to do, but they’d also stopped just dropping by to say hello and see how he was doing.
He didn’t blame them, of course. One day, he was so sick of needles, he slapped the shadow of the nurse who had come to put an IV in his arm. She fell crumpled to the floor, sobbing. Others came and escorted her out, and then a doctor came by, yelled at him, and jabbed him several times with a needle. The doctor kept saying that Toby’s veins were no good. They kept collapsing, and he kept fishing, and they wouldn’t bleed at all. Eventually, after nearly ten tries, with Toby dizzy from all the pain, the doctor found a good vein in his thumb, and hooked the IV port up to that.
He wondered later if the doctor had done this on purpose, after what he did to the nurse. He knew he should feel bad about all of this. But, no. Instead his anger welled up even greater, a slow burning light inside of his body. He saw it when he looked down, a little candle spark of fire, right where his heart should be, sputtering in the dark. It was the only thing he saw for days, his vision drifting further and further away, until all was lit by the lamp of his hate.
That hateful lantern of a heart is a beacon in the night for all the wrong kinds of creatures. Creatures that exist on the skin of our world, pressing up against the thin membrane, and looking for the wounded that would let them in, and give them flesh to wear. It came to him on a rotten Saturday, when his medications made him vomitsick with that underskin ant feeling. Woozy, dizzy fury fluttered about in Toby’s heart, the lamp of hate the brightest it had ever been.
At first he thought it was a hallucination. Doctors said that might happen, after all. It’d been forever since he’d seen the ghostly blobs of his parents, and he wondered now if they’d ever been real at all. Was it dream, a lingering thing, something that would always haunt him? So when the bones made of light first appeared he shut his eyes to try and force it away into the darkness.
But even with eyes closed the skeleton stuck around. It stood in the center of his room, not moving, not speaking a single word. He opened his eyes again, and the rotted lumpy shadows of the world returned, with the bones still there. It looked like the after image of the sun at first, like when he was younger and snuck a peak at the eclipse, and saw yellow blotches for days. They made curious shapes back then, sometimes a skull or bones. Almost exactly like this entity here.
His dad had said that it was just a random series of splotches and nothing more than that. “Come on, champ. It’s like looking at a quilt or a rock and seeing faces that aren’t there. Doesn’t mean nothing more than nothing.”
That thought made him miss his dad so much. The heartlight fluttered again, bright and then brighter still, now tinged with a deadly combination of sorrow and hate. The skeleton nodded at him, and spoke. The splotches moved like a jaw on a real skull. “Hello there.”
Its voice all smoke and lightning.
“Hi? Are you really here?”
“Yes and no, but I would like to be really really here. And to do so, I need you to lend me a hand. I had a body here for awhile, a little girl no older than yourself. But I got kicked out of her something fierce, because she didn’t have the right kind of heart. But you’ve got the right kind of heart, Toby. I know that, I can see that. You’ve got the kind of heart that could keep me going forever.”
Toby wasn’t sure what to make of all this. The meds left his brain in a constant fog, and right now he was trying everything in his power not to throw up. He hated throwing up, and that seemed to be a common occurrence these days. Way more than he liked, that was for certain. And yet, even under all that, this whole conversation felt off. It was like the day his mom said they were going home to take a shower, and they would be back in the next few hours. That was the night they died. That whole night felt off, too, just like tonight.
“No, thank you,” he said, and he meant it.
“You haven’t even heard my proposal yet, so how can you be so certain? This is a gift I’m giving you, in exchange for your help and services. I want to do miracles in this world, Toby. But I cannot.”
“Why.”
“Because I need flesh and bones to do that. I was wondering, could I have yours? You probably won’t need them for much longer anyway.”
No no no no no. This was wrong.
“So if I’m not long for this world, what’s in it for me?”
Everything ached and his vision danced. He wanted this vision to leave him now, so he could get some rest and feel slightly better.
“Eternity is in it for you. You let me inside, and I can keep your body going for a long, long, time. Might even stick around after this world is gone and done for, and the whole universe is a cold dead emptiness, you would be the only thing left alive. No more pain, no more sorrow, nothing of that sort. Now, I can’t heal all of you, that’s only a gift I can give to others, and only after I have your bones and body under my will. But I can make the pain drain away, and I can make it so death has stopped and will never claim you. What do you say?”
“Will I still be bli
“In a way, yes, we’ll still be blind.”
“And I won’t die? Will that mean the cancer will keep growing, and I’ll be in here, trapped in a living corpse? Unable to pass onto the next life?”
“Oh my, how horrible that would be. Of course not, Toby, my dear, of course not. When I come in, I can freeze it in place with a single word. It’s not as good as my other gifts, but as far as things go, it’s a much better deal than what you have now. Wouldn’t you say?”
He wanted to be left alone, and told the creature as much.
“I’m sorry, Toby, I can’t do that. I’ll be here, waiting patiently for your answer.”
“All right, then. Tell me your name. You do that much, and I will give you an answer.”
The creature whispered something horrible sounding. It was mostly a word, constructed out of strange syllables that would be impossible to create in a human mouth. The tongue went into all the wrong places, and Toby wondered if a bird would be better suited to say that name. The sounds of it made him shiver all over, and his blood felt colder than usual. He couldn’t help it, he couldn’t hold on anymore, he leaned over onto the edge of his bed and vomited into a lone bucket, one that had been placed there for that very reason.
“I . . . I’m sorry . . .”
His mouth tasted bright and pink and he hated it.
“Don’t be, my child. Don’t be.”
“I can’t say that name . . . how about I call you Mister Brightbones?”
The skeleton smiled.
“That is a perfect name. I couldn’t have chosen a better one myself.”
And then he held out his bony paw of light, and Toby leaned over and grabbed it and said, “Okay, yes. You can use my body. Just promise me I’ll still be in there, and I’ll still be able to experience life as much as I can.”
“I promise. Everything I do, you will do, too. And everything I taste, you will taste, and you will understand. You will be able to see as I see, not with the limitations of the physical world and your damaged eyes, but instead with the ethereal shadows of the world that hums behind sight.”
And then a whisper, filled with dark secret knowledge. “Everything in this world is a shadow. All they see is shadow. I will show you the sun, and you will be astonished at how beautiful it all can be when we pull back the skin of this world and reveal the bone and sinew that’s underneath.”
And Toby did understand. He’d seen his own muscles and bones before his eyes completely went. He’d peeked during operations, and watched what should never be watched with childlike glances. The secrets we hold inside of us, the wonders of the world beneath the flesh. But he had seen it, and he was in awe of the beauty he saw.
Everything was a top, spinning, as Mister Brightbones walked into him. The two skeletons merging. And Toby slid away from the waking self, and only stayed a whisper, hovering around the edges of his thoughts. Watching, but not touching. Not doing. Yet, still alive.
Even now, decades later, long past his expiration date, still alive.
1
Between the knotted trunks of the trees a shadow danced in the fog. At first Nix thought it was another scarecrow, moving in the wind. She’d come back for a walk on her property to see if she could figure out who planted them there in the first place. Creepy things, with ragged old clothes, scattered along the various paths. The first one freaked her out something fierce, and she was about to call the cops and have them come and take a look at them when she saw that shadow.
It was something human shaped, a little shorter than her, twirling about and flailing in a wild, almost erratic manner. It reminded her of when her own arms would spasm during a multiple sclerosis relapse, the way they would involuntarily jerk about, like she was punching the air.
Just the thought of it made her reach over and grab her left shoulder and give it a small squeeze. It was always the left side, wasn’t it? Like her sickness played favorites, of all things. It was understandable, she always liked her left side as well.
The fog drifted and the dim clouds moved a bit to reveal a teenage girl of about sixteen, give or take a few years. A purple wig perched delicately on top of her bald head, and as she danced it would slip aside and reveal shaved skin and esoteric tattoos. Her body was gaunt, her clothes so big they bloomed around her. Her eyes sparked with embers and fire, and seemed to call the lightning in the sky towards her. She was a roman candle of a girl, burning brightly in the evening light.
Nix shifted her weight a bit and accidentally stepped on a dry twig. The sound was a gunshot in the air, the crows scattering from branches above. The girl turned around and looked directly at Nix and grinned. Her clothes were filthy, mottled, and ripped. Her skin had patches of mud and dirt caked across it, and Nix wondered if she’d taken a shower recently. Dead leaves clung to her hair and arms.
And it dawned on Nix, then, that this girl was homeless. A mothering sensation welled up inside, and she wanted to run over, give her a hug, wash her up, take care of her and feed her. This feeling was very odd and alien, and unlike any other emotion she’d felt in the past. Like it came from outside of her body, sinking tentacles of oxytocin under her skin.
“Hello,” the girl cried out and smiled, waving. “Howdy, howdy, hello! Pleased to meet you, new best friend.”
Nix couldn’t help but smile back. “Why, hello right back. Are those your scarecrows?”
“Yes, yes indeedy, that’s my ring of protection.”
“What are they protecting you from?”
The girl frowned for a moment, and looked to the sky like she was thinking really hard on this, and that it was the most important question in the universe. “It’s not just protecting me, you know. It’s protecting you as well. “
“Fair enough. Can you tell me from what, though?”
The branches around them rustled in a feverish sound, as a few cracked and tumbled about with the force of the storm. It was a right chill air, what everyone around Dark Rivers called the Witch Wind. The teenage runaway wrung her shirt in her hands, and looked nervously toward the ground. “Mister Brightbones.”
The name sounded weird in her head, and Nix didn’t like it. The girl was in trouble, and even if the scarecrows were part of some delusion, she had a feeling that Mister Brightbones was a very real danger. Probably someone that abused her, and was probably the reason she’d run away from home in the first place. She had so many questions . . .
Nix tried to stand on her left leg, as the arch of her foot screamed in pain. The muscle felt like it was being stretched close to tearing, so she took her weight off of it and sighed. Stupid multiple sclerosis, always acting up at the worst possible time. “I would say let’s go back to my place and get you something to eat, but I can’t walk right now, and I don’t think you’re any shape to help me out. No offense, but it looks like you can barely hold up your own clothes, let alone a grown-ass woman like myself.”
“Will you be okay?”
Nix leaned against the tree and looked up at the sky. It would rain any moment now—you could taste it in the air like pennies. “Yeah,” she said, “I just need to rest for a hot second, and then hopefully I’ll be all right. While we wait, why don’t you tell me all about this Mister Brightbones?”
“Okay.”
And then the girl sat down right next to Nix, and leaned her head against a large knotted burl of the tree. “I’m Daphne Valentine, by the by.”
Nix laughed. Daphne had always been her favorite Scooby Doo character. “My name is Phoenix, but all my friends call me Nix.”
“Phoenix?”
“Yeah, my full name is Phoenix Fox. I think my parents expected me to be a super hero.”
“And you’re not?”
“Naw. It’s hard to be a super hero when you’ve got all this going on.” And she motioned at her body with her cane. “Having a chronic illness is less like a super power and more like a super bummer.” Yeah, it was a bad joke. She had a tendency to make them when nervous.
Daphne frowned and crossed her arms across her chest. “Oh, okay . . . I guess. Well, my parents didn’t expect me to be a superhero, but they did expect me to be dead by now. I’m sick, you know, like you but different. I’ve got my . . . cure? Well, I guess you could call it that, but it’s not what you’re thinking. Mister Brightbones, he was the one who give it to me, and it worked like gangbusters. It was a miracle, and I was so relieved and filled with joy. Until he had me pay the price. It was . . . it was . . . awful. You don’t have any idea what he had me do, and I wanted to do it at first, he has that kind of power over you, and you get drunk with it, you know? Like your body is filled with lightning. But after a while, it got to be too much. The things he asked me to do grew worse and worse, and I just couldn’t live with myself anymore, after all I’d done, and the price he had me pay for a little miracle cure. I had to get out, I ran and kept on running, and I never looked back, even though I know he’s out there looking for me. He doesn’t like it when his children leave him. That’s what he called us, even the adults, even a woman in her fifties . . . he called us his children.”
