Dark Dark Heart

By Kaitlin Corvus

A killer hunts the humid streets of Sadie, leaving a calling card at the scene of each crime: a black construction paper valentine. The victims, each carefully chosen, are left the same way, broken and heartless.

 

Haunted by the ghosts of the dead, Rina Henley will stop at nothing for truth and justice, but in her quest, she has brought the spotlight to her and now plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

 

Summer Lin, Rina's roommate, thinks of herself as the Vanishing Girl. When things get rough, she can disappear like a ghost herself, and promises Rina she can help her disappear, too. After all, she's been on the fringes for weeks now, to escape the ugliest of truths.

 

As the summer simmers around them and Sadie is gripped by terror and tangled rumours, twisted love notes and secrets bring Rina and those closest to her to the very brink of destruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215207376

Kaitlin Corvus

Kaitlin Corvus is from Ontario, Canada. The north holds the best part of her. She writes about nobodies, monsters, and gutter glitter, loves the stars, the deep dark sea, and a good horror mystery. She can be found on twitter @KaitlinCorvus

Book preview

Chapter 1

Humidity sticks to Rina’s skin like melted caramel. The sun has slanted in the sky, blazing down on her with its midday intensity, encouraging sweat to roll down her neck, over her collarbone, and into the collar of her limp shirt. She ruffles the material at her waist half-heartedly. Inside is air conditioned, but she’s reluctant to go in. The house feels like a cage. She didn’t like it as a child and has even less time for it these days. The garden is the only space she can tolerate, even if that means physical discomfort.

Small stones dig into her thighs and ankles as she crosses her legs and leans over her phone. The news plays out of her speakers, and on screen, a peppy reporter gushes about a high school band winning first prize at a local competition. Rina can see her heart isn’t in it, though. Her smile is obviously fake, breaking away between this story and the next like autumn leaves leaving their trees. The way people can turn their emotions on and off is chilling. Rina tries it herself, smiling wide and then shutting down. She wants to be just like them. Sunny, sunny, sunny, and then either a slate of impenetrable grey clouds, or a storm front. That’s power. Not money. Not words. Total control over what your face and body are doing.

—when the body of another girl was found this morning in East Mill Park in the Greater Sadie Area, says the reporter.

Something shifts at the edge of the garden: a glob of cold darkness, vaguely human-shaped, mostly featureless. Rina ignores it. It doesn’t help to look at it; it disappears under her attention every time.

The reporter continues. Police have yet to release details but a person close to the victim has stepped forward and revealed their identity as twenty-three-year-old Molly Asher, a teaching assistant at Sadie University.

Rina squints to get a better view of the crime scene over the reporter’s shoulder. The woman stands at the edge of East Mill Park, as close to the police barricade as she can get. Around her, people crowd every inch of grass and lean against the police tape. Police urge them back to preserve the integrity of the scene.

The wind blows, throwing the reporter’s hair back over the shoulders of her smart business suit. Far behind her, a small, black blob wobbles in the thin tree branches. Rina can just barely make out the rounded curves of the top of the paper valentine. It’s black, like the one before it, neatly cut, and unadorned except for the golden letter M that will be at its centre, seen once someone secretly snaps a picture of its face and blasts it all over the internet. M for Molly. M for a murdered girl. This is number two. The case was odd when Samantha Brown was found, a paper valentine swinging over her unseeing eyes. Now it’s turning diabolical.

A pair of detectives move beneath the valentine, one tall, blonde, and built, the other dark haired and lean. They overlook the evidence strewn on the ground. Yellow markers are placed in the dry yellow grass. Rina's imagination tries to take a turn toward the morbid as she considers what those details are.

Inside the house, the front door opens and closes. Rina sinks in on herself, trying to be small and unobtrusive. She hates that she does this. Hates that she hopes he won’t check the backyard today. Hates that this is the place she always goes to escape.

The grey form under the lilac tree gets solid for an instant, as if puffing up. This time, it seems to say, this time I’ll be more substantial. This time, I’ll scare him away. Rina can’t help it; she looks toward it, though she knows she shouldn’t. She gets the impression of thin shoulders, thin hips, and thin hands before it disappears like fog on a lake.

—still no evidence of forced sexual contact, leaving investigators to wonder what, exactly, is the motivation behind these killings, the reporter still prattles on. Rina barely hears a word the woman says. She wishes the phantom would come back and really try to scare him the way they used to scare her when she was young and didn’t understand that they couldn’t hurt her.

The ghost doesn’t appear.

But he does.

The back door swings open and there he is in his blue herringbone wool peaked suit, looking immaculate despite the heat. Rina fixes the hem of her shirt around her hips as he sits down on the patio table in front of her and looks at her with eyes the exact same shade of brown as her own.

Rina silences her phone.

You saw they found another body, he says in greeting.

I guess so. She folds her phone into her palm. The screen is hot from the sun.

Two girls were killed the same way. It’s looking like a pattern. He acts like she hasn’t been paying attention.

Okay. Rina hunts for an escape route. With him blocking the way in front of her, the house behind masquerades as a sanctuary.

He’s targeting girls just like you, Rina.

She rolls her lips together to catch her annoyance. He’s in the next town over.

There aren’t that many kilometres between us.

He’s trying to scare her. Rina meets her father’s eyes. She doesn’t like the way they’re big, genuine, and soft. I thought you weren't allowed to give any details?

I’m not. But when my daughter is at risk, I’ll tell her what she needs to know to keep safe. He takes her hand as he speaks and squeezes. She squeezes back because that’s what daughters are supposed to do. Don’t go into the park by yourself or out after dark. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t wander around the city on your own.

So don’t live my life, Rina says before she can stop herself.

Not until the killer’s caught, no. He palms her face, taking her by the chin and studies her intently. She holds her breath as he leans forward to kiss her cheek. His moustache pricks her skin. I worry about you, Rina.

She waits for something worse but thankfully, it doesn’t come. He stands, returning to the house.

Rina unlocks her phone again to watch the reporter for another few minutes. The story is over. Now she’s talking about a strong summer storm that might break the humidity for a day or two.

Rina sighs and faces the house. Its stone and brick exterior is modern and well-kept. There are topiary bushes, trimmed, and expansive gardens that receive a weekly weeding. Most of the doors are French and stained glass. The whole thing is carefully cultivated to provoke awe and envy. She hates it.

Gently, she opens the door and pokes her head in. The main floor seems abandoned. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeates the house.

She closes the door quietly and tiptoes up the stairs, into her bedroom. Here, the air is icy, in direct contradiction to the storm of summer outside.

Her laptop comes alive with a whirl of its expensive fans, her printer, too, chugging and buzzing. Rina searches the internet for the article on Molly Asher and the newest screen caps of the reporter’s initial account. Just like she thought, someone has already captured a picture of the black heart waving like a limp, ominous flag, and zoomed in on it. It looks like a homemade valentine, but where all the red is supposed to be, it’s been dipped in darkness, dark, dark, dark like the deed it represents. A calligraphy gold M shines in the centre where the killer has marked this valentine for his victim, just like Rina thought. She wonders how long he’s been studying Molly Asher; she wonders if Molly knew him. She wonders if Molly screamed, or scratched, or bit him before he wrung the life from her.

She hopes so.

Rina hits print and then uses a pair of sharp scissors to carefully cut the heart from the paper and meticulously pastes it in her little scrap book of macabre things. Some of its pages are choked in poetry, some are crowded with short stories she’s never finished. Most, though, are pictures of murdered girls and their murder sites. The very first page belongs to her mother, homage to the life that was stolen from her during a grocery store robbery that happened when Rina was just ten. All the ones that come after are victims like her, girls surprised to find themselves in dangerous situations, or tricked into their demise. Rina knows she should stop, but once you start something like this, it acts like an addiction, and is just as difficult to quit.

She clears her browser history and hides the scrapbook back beneath her mattress. She recycles the cuttings, then listens. She can hear her father on another conference call in his office down the hall. That should keep him busy for an hour, hopefully. The director for the Community and Public Affairs section of the Raker Police Department gets no rest.

Rina tiptoes to the bathroom and locks herself inside. She peels her clothes from her body and glances at herself once in the mirror. The girl staring back at her curls her nose when she looks at all her pale skin, her full body, the love handles she can’t seem to shed, the pouch of her stomach she can wiggle when she pinches it. Something anxious and displeased rears its head in her and struggles to get out.

She looks away from the mirror.

Rina cranks on the cold water knob and positions herself beneath the shower’s spray. The sudden cold makes her gulp. Goosebumps explode over her skin. She bites her lip and waits for her body to get used to the change. It never really happens. Anytime she moves, a new part of her is exposed to the icy water and she must start again.

By the time she turns off the water and dries, her teeth are chattering.

Clutching the towel around her body, she pokes her head out and looks either way down the hallway. Runners of cold water sluice over her collarbone and leave droplets on the flooring. Her father’s office is still closed. The coast is clear. She clutches her sweaty dress to her chest and takes small, quick steps on her tiptoes to her bedroom.

Rina catches her breath when she steps in and finds her father no longer in a conference call but laying back on her bed with his hands cupped behind his head. He’s taken off his suit jacket, now he’s in a white dress shirt. He still wears his polished dress shoes, and his favourite silver belt buckle.

He sits up when he hears her enter. Rinie. The nickname puts her guard up the way it shouldn’t. She turns for the door before she understands she’s running away.

Her bed squeaks and then the heat of his body settles against her back, undoing all the comfort of her cold shower. His hands close on her bare shoulders, hotter than her skin. His breath chases down the back of her neck. Where are you going?

I need to get to the library before it closes. I have some research I need to do for a paper due on Friday and some of the articles I need aren’t digitized— She says it all automatically, one excuse after the other, without thinking how ridiculous that sounds when she’s standing in a towel.

You didn’t tell me that. I’ll drive you.

Thanks, she says stiffly.

He’s deaf to her mood. He always seems to be. His fingers tense minutely. You smell good. He punctuates his compliment with a soft smile. She can’t see it, but she can feel the hollows of his cheeks get full against her temple.

Rina tries to pull out of his grasp to face him. Sometimes, if he can look at her, he will see her, his daughter and he’ll stop. He tightens his hold on her shoulders to keep her where she is and slides his fingers through the water on her chest.

Rina bites her cheek hard. I need to get ready.

He doesn’t speak. His fingers dip lower to the top of her towel and smooth the skin over her breasts. Normally, Rina would close her eyes, but today she watches his familiar hands, hands that have held her when she was sick, or happy, or sad, have pushed her on swings, and held her steady on her bike when she was learning to ride, close over the towel and pull it to the right. The material lets go, and it feels like it’s betraying her the same way he is. His body pressing into her back prevents it from falling all the way to the floor, like if she isn’t completely nude, it isn’t completely wrong.

She lets him do it for the same reason she’s started collecting macabre pictures—once you start something like this, it’s difficult to stop. She should have put an end to it that first time, when he lay in her bed, tears staining his cheeks, a picture of his dead wife open on his phone. Instead, she laid in frozen horror, her silence saying yes when her mouth wouldn’t say no. And now he thinks it’s okay.

But today, something feels fragile. It could be the heat rubbing Rina raw, or his pen-calloused fingers pinching and her nipples getting hard and sensitive despite everything, but Rina thinks—knows—this is the last time.

She doesn’t fight. She lets everything happen the way it usually does, except when he’s through and finally leaves her room, she puts on fresh clothing, takes the money she’s saved for emergencies from the nightstand beside her bed, and her scrapbook, and she walks down the stairs and out the front door without looking back.

The grey phantom is back. It watches her now from beneath the large maple tree in the front yard. Rina doesn’t chance a look at it. She mouths goodbye, though, unsure if a ghost is bound to the places it’s lived or died. It almost feels like she’s losing a friend.

By the time her father is finished taking his own shower, she’s already flagged down a vintage cherry red car with a decal Thunderbird stretching down the side. The man in the driver’s seat has hair as black as coal, eyes like the forest floor, and an infectious smile that she immediately likes. He’s going to Sadie if she’s headed that way.

Rina digs the toes of her sandals into the concrete, considering his offer. The sun bakes its mark into her skin. The man waits patiently for her response. Girls are dying in Sadie, she hears her father say.

Good girl Rina never disobeys. Sadie will be the last place he expects her to go.

Rina swallows past her nerves. Sadie’s good.

Chapter 2

Cheap lilac perfume burns Summer’s sinuses. She breathes shallowly as she uses the mirror in the motel bathroom to pin a lock of wig hair back from her temple. She looks like a stranger in black hair. Stark. Someone completely new. If she ignores her familiar freckles and her blue eyes, it’s perfect. She can’t do anything about either of those.

Leaning in under the harsh bathroom light, she swipes deep plum-coloured lipstick over her lips—also cheap, though the matte colour claims twelve-hour wear. Lastly, she puts a clear coat of mascara over her lashes, leaving them so blonde, they’re almost translucent.

She looks like a porcelain doll fresh out of the kiln.

When she comes out into the main room, her client is sitting on the floppy corner of the ancient bed. He takes up a lot of space, tall and wide with sculpted vanity muscle. He looks her over head to foot. She has a difficult time identifying his expression: sick? Pleased? He’s the kind of man that’s hard to read. His face is blank, right up to his eyes, blue like hers, but cold.

Sorry. I had to take that call. His voice is gruff. At first, she thought it was put on, but now assumes it’s accumulated from years of smoking, if the cigarette behind his ear is any indication. He doesn’t look old, and he doesn’t look young, caught somewhere in-between in his open suit jacket, sweaty from a day stuck under the sweltering sun. He’s so fresh off his shift, Summer saw him drive past in his discretely marked cruiser, not five minutes before he returned in his personal Impala.

She almost declined his offer then, sure that it was a ploy to catch her in an illegal act, but she’s desperate—has been desperate for days—and desperate people go to desperate measures. Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? He arrests her and keeps her locked up for the night? Great. She has a safe place to regroup, evaluate her life decisions. Maybe, while she’s staring at the ceiling of her cell, she can find the perfect way to come clean, confess to the cops what she knows in such a way that won’t get her in trouble, too. And she can do it all while getting a meal and a bed. They’ll call her sister Daphne, and she’ll be mad and worried, but she’ll speed over and take Summer home, and tell her everything’s going to be okay, like she used to when they were kids.

You know it won’t happen like that, Summer tells herself before she can fall too far into her own narrative. It can’t. She fucked up. She fucked up big.

Summer swallows and says, That’s okay. She wants to scream.

He stuffs his phone into his breast pocket beneath the name tag that reads W. Brody. Summer smooths her hands over her dress.

Do you want anything? W. Brody asks. There’s room service. I’ll get it.

Wine, Summer thinks. Oodles of wine. I’m fine. Penny, Summer’s savvy friend of exactly four days, says that guys don’t like it when the girls get sloppy drunk. They won’t pay, too scared of sexual harassment charges coming up on them on top of purchasing a sex worker.

Okay. He looks just as awkward as she feels. Well. He clears his throat.

Well. Well. It’s her turn. Her cue to take control. Penny showed her how in exquisite detail. It was a very intoxicating performance.

She just doesn’t know if she can be as sultry.

Summer dampens her lips and struts the way she was shown. With every step, her heels try to wobble out from beneath her. W. Brody doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he looks relieved. Glad that this is somehow something he recognizes. Those other girls on Norman Avenue are polished to a high shine. Those that aren’t don’t make it very long in the business. If he wanted an over-confident girl tonight, he would have stopped for one of those. But he didn’t. Summer assumes that means he wants a girl as uncertain as he is.

He lets her get close. Summer puts her hand to his chest and feels his heart beating along, feels his lungs fill, this stranger. She’s touching this stranger.

You’ve been with strangers before.

Though that was all for fun. She’s never been paid.

Don’t think about it.

She fingers the collar of his button-down shirt and smiles. When he smiles back, she leans over and kisses him. He tastes like his cigarettes and crushed mint leaves. He touches her in the firm way one does when they’ve had plenty of experience touching. It makes her quiver with nerves so badly, he feels it and stops kissing her.

Are you okay?

Yes. Summer kisses him again and finds the bottom of his shirt. It’s damp, and so’s the skin beneath. His muscles flex. He’s taken very good care of himself, minus the smoking. She croons. That’s so nice. That’s what Penny says men like. To feel powerful and wanted and worshipped.

He takes the back of her dress and starts undoing the zipper. Her whole outfit was purchased with Penny’s credit card from an outlet mall that sold it to her for twelve dollars. It’s cheap and thin, and when W. Brody gets the zipper stuck and tries to unstick it, it doesn’t have a hope in hell. It breaks.

Humiliation flares across her skin. She’s suddenly so hot, she almost can’t breathe.

Fuck. Sorry—

She doesn’t want to hear the next words out of his mouth.

Keep it together. Keep it together.

She takes the straps of her dress and pulls them down over her arms. He gets quiet watching her breasts come out. For a moment, Summer feels like she has the same black magic Daphne seems to, the kind that lets her catch men with her visage, makes them silly with want. She was wickedly jealous of her sister’s ability growing up. Then W. Brody touches her, and she thinks it’s more of a curse than a gift. She’s shaking again and breathing unevenly. Her client tries to ignore it all at first, but she can see it’s eating away at him, bit by bit, his guilt overshadowing any self-loathing he wants to dance with tonight.

She struggles to get everything back under control but the more she tries to mute her physiological reactions, the wilder everything seems until she cannot get breath, her teeth chatter against each other, and black spots fill her vision.

W. Brody pulls away and studies her. You’ve never taken a client before. Ever.

Summer tries to defend herself, though his is a statement, not a question. Once, she lies.

He pushes her back so he can lean forward and steeple his hands. With his thumbs under his chin, he presses his long fingers against his mouth, huffing air into them. They stay like that in silence for a moment. The small lamp on the bedside table buzzes, and beyond the motel window, cars splash through rain puddles.

Are you okay? Summer ventures.

He shakes his head and presses his fingers harder against his mouth, turning his lips white.

Summer studies him like she would a strange dog. Will he bite? Will he bark? He doesn’t move. What does that mean?

"That means, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. He doesn’t raise his voice, but Summer feels the whip of it. Christ."

Please, she chatters. I’m better now. I was just—nervous, you know? I’m good.

He drops his hands and skewers her with a glare. No.

"No? I need the money—I—please— Her eyes are wet without her permission. I need to pay Penny for her room tonight. She didn’t take Summer in out of the goodness of her heart. They’re strangers, and she doesn’t think they’ll ever not be. Whatever’s left over, I’m saving for rent so I can get my own apartment."

His stare makes her want to squirm. Don’t fall apart, Penny says. That’s the most important part. The first time is the hardest. Just don’t fall apart.

Let’s start over, Summer tries. She pushes her dress down the rest of the way. Brody’s eyes scald her skin when he fixes his stare on her body. It’s not on her breasts like she hopes, though, it’s on the fading bruise on her ribs.

He sits straighter and seeks her skin with his fingers. Did someone do that to you?

His words are an electric shock through her system. She hasn’t primed a story and doesn’t know what to say. She pulls away from his reaching hand, jerking back like he’s a poisonous spider she didn’t see. I just fell. Half on wet grass, half on a parking lot where a concrete stopper caught her body.

Brody meets her eyes. Being caught in his gaze is like submerging in a cold-water stream. Glacier melt. The arctic ocean. An old boyfriend?

No.

Your dad?

No. I fell, she says again.

His mouth crescents into an ugly smile. I guess girls are really fucking clumsy, huh?

Summer doesn’t know what to say. A stranger has never spoken to her like this before. She stutters before finally spitting out, I guess so.

His expression gets darker. She stumbles back a step, realizing he doesn’t want her to agree with him.

Brody takes a breath and holds it. He lets it out again to say, You don’t have to be scared. You can come make a statement and the police will take care of it.

Summer’s shaking for a new reason now. No one touched me.

They’re caught in another staring match. He looks away first. Fuck, Brody, he mutters to himself. "Fuck."

Summer grabs her broken dress from her feet. Now her entire body is hot, not just her face. You know, I think I’m just going to go.

Brody shakes his head before she’s even stopped speaking. Get your stuff. I’ll take you.

His words cartwheel through her thoughts. She tries twice before she can say, I’m not going to the police station. She’s not ready.

His jaw juts. Summer prepares herself for a fierce argument. He surprises her by saying, Fine. No statement. But you have to get your things.

Summer’s world twists and turns. You’re arresting me? She doesn’t know whether to be happy or not. Not anymore. She glances toward the door. How fast can she dash across the room? And will she run into the hallway naked? Will Brody chase her down and handcuff her? Will anyone question? It’ll be her word against his.

As though reading her mind, he stands and puts himself in a position that blocks Summer’s easy escape route. I’m not arresting you, he snaps. Just get your stuff.

You can’t force me to make a statement, either, Summer says, just in case he thinks otherwise.

Just get your shit together and come on. Now.

He has an authoritative way about him, a needling way, that Summer fears will make her spill the truth. She hurries to do his bidding, hoping to stop his probing questions before she can say anything she’s not ready to say.

Chapter 3

Apicture of a fish hangs crookedly on the bathroom wall. It’s large-scaled, huge-mouthed and has the biggest, deadest eyes Rina has ever seen. Its stare makes it plausible to conceive why pescatarians might think it’s acceptable to eat them: pulling themselves through water, gasping gap mouthed as they do, and striking with dizzying furiousness from dark and secret places.

She washes her hands and fixes her tangled hair as best she can without borrowing her host’s hairbrush—an act which she’s sure she would not get away with, considering her long, blonde hair—and leaves the bathroom as fast as she can.

In the living room, she’s met with the stench of Alphagetti. Rina can’t remember the last time she ate something out of a can but her stomach rumbles too much for her to be particular. She finds Oliver by the stove, stirring the pot with a short metal spoon.

It’s been two days since he picked her up outside of Raker and drove her here to Sadie, and in that time, she hasn’t learned much about him other than the most basic things. He eats a lot because he works out a lot. He loves his car. And he shares his space with a guy named Ashe, who listens to a lot of upbeat punk rock, which is where Rina imagines Ashe’s blue hair and perpetual rictus comes from.

She laughed that first night, laying on their couch visualizing the days Ashe buys blue hair dye, and he and Oliver sit together in the cramped orange bathroom that’s not much bigger than a closet, and Oliver works the product through Ashe’s hair.

It still makes her smile. It’s sweet.

Rina opens her mouth to announce herself when Ashe speaks up. His voice comes disembodied from the pantry; he’s just out of sight. That’s the last one. He doesn’t sound very happy.

Neither does Oliver. It’s just a fucking can of Alphagetti, Ashe.

"I know. But it’s my can."

I’ll buy you a new one.

"You missed four days of work last week. You