long line across his body, and he thought, for a moment, that he could see the first Martin Hearst, watching him with disappointment now that the last of the line would die with empty hands and a squandered legacy. Dark eyes, a bald crown, and skin sallow from a jaundiced liver. He thought he could see all six dead Hearsts lined up in a row like pallbearers waiting to carry him away with them to the hereafter he deserved. The shadows they cast were not nearly as imposing as he’d imagined, and he felt no shame that he had not lived up to their expectations. Only regret, in what he had not done for himself or Jayne. What a waste, to have lived for wretches such as them.
The ants spread over his chest and got to work, devouring the last of the Hearst line. Before he closed his eyes for good, something else occurred to him, and his smile was bitter. In killing the superintendent, they’d murdered the only person willing to take out their trash.
44
I Weary of the Sun, and Wish the State of the World Were Now Undone
This his happened before. Don’t you remember the ants, and Hinton?
In her dream, they were Siamese twins again. This version of her mother wasn’t black-and-white, but old and wrinkled. Her dress was a hospital gown that fit her like a sail. She pushed Audrey, hard. They came apart so that they were half-women with split hearts and wounded legs, but both were still breathing.
You live in a bad place, Lamb, Betty said.
She was sleeping because the work had been so hard. The piano had made discordant music as she’d chopped, then sawed. Her arms and legs shivered from muscle exhaustion, even in sleep, and she was so hungry she didn’t remember her name. She thought maybe it was lamb. The kind people eat.
In her dream, she and her mother were sitting on the air mattress, watching the door. On the other side, The Breviary’s true parents waited. Not Schermerhorn, but the thing that had guided his hand and given him the design for those plans. The spiderlike wraith that had followed her down Jayne’s hall. The monster beneath the monster.
She’d tested the door’s slant with the level in her toolbox to make sure that it pointed two degrees west. The tenants had provided her with everything she needed.
Just then severed Betty shook her. “You have to get out of here!”
Audrey looked to her left and saw her cleaved heart. No blood flowed, but only two chambers beat in a quiet lub-dup. “I don’t like moving, you know that. I’m done with motels, Momma.”
“Go now, Lamb. Or it’ll find a way in. It’ll get inside you, like it got inside me.” The woman shook harder, and Audrey’s breath caught in her throat. Betty was old. A skinny collection of bones and wild, white hair whose jagged bangs had recently been cut. On her far side was an IV tree that dripped fluid into her arm while, in the distance, Audrey heard the steady breathing of a respirator like half of this dream was taking place in a hospital. Was this really Betty, and not a trick? Had she somehow reached out through her coma?
Something wet and warm trickled. Audrey touched her neck and severed chest where tiny drops of blood were beginning to bead. “We’re the same. Neither of us were born whole. My heart’s all fucked up,” she said.
Betty shook her head. “No, Lamb. We’re different.” Unlike all the other ghosts and hollow echoes that had visited this last week, Audrey knew this woman in a way that made her feel less alone.
“I’m afraid,” Audrey said. To her left, her cleaved heart bled. The drops coalesced into a red line that thickened. And then the blood began to flow more heavily. Her neck bled, too. “I never stopped bleeding. From that time you cut me. It’s not your fault. We were born wrong, that’s all.”
Aged Betty reached into her open chest and pulled out what remained of her still-beating heart. “Take this. It belongs to you. I never had one of my own. You shared yours. I’ll give it back now,” she said as she joined it to its mate inside Audrey’s chest. She held it there, firm, for a couple of seconds until the thing stopped bleeding. Her neck stopped bleeding, too. The split healed, and she became whole.
Audrey took the woman in her arms. Betty. She smelled like Baby