Art by John Wilkins
I have seen great dances of a thousand locked in the fields of nowhere and the quiet, lonely, spirited watching of blossoms falling from a cherry tree; there have been ethereal fox parades and entire rivers of tears being flooded before my very eyes. Some of these events can be considered miracles, and a few have even changed my life.
I have devoted myself to experiencing as many of these events as I can in order to better my understanding of what keeps communities from falling apart. Ever since I was a young teenager I have always wondered how everyone can so easily accept the concept of a neighbourhood, where all types of people live within wooden or brick or cement containers side by side by side, living their entire lives without knowing anything at all about the families on either side of them. This gave me the view that human beings are inherently alone and that the concept of society is the only thing keeping them together – society being a concept created and maintained by people in order to make their personal goals more easily attainable. As this frightens me, I search out the things that unite people, things that are consensual and not forced onto human beings like the psychologically damaging experiences of going to school and consequent going to work until their bodies and brains have outgrown their use.
But now I’ve spent an entire paragraph alienating my intended audience. So let’s begin: what follows is an account of the most sensational event that I have ever come across.
Every winter in the town of Hopper there arrives a scatter of mysterious houses. These houses are known as Hell Houses due to the eerie red glow which emanates from them at night, a glow as warm as a comforter on a frozen December day and yet as intimidating as a raging forest fire; such paradox stems from the imagination of the Hell House passersby, whose interest draws them nearer and nearer until all they can see is red. Even the town’s eldest residents are unable to ignore the houses, despite having coexisted with them for over one hundred years.
My short stay in Hopper was brought about by an episode that would shake the town for the rest of its days: a trio of young men had concocted a Test of Manhood which involved entering one of the Hell Houses – something nobody in their right mind would ever think of attempting – and bringing back an item from inside, something that could only come from a Hell House. Only one of the young men actually attempted it, a rather eccentric lad by the name of Douglass Gorn.
Douglass was short, walked with a hunch, and was self-conscious about the lumps of fat hanging about his cheeks. Outside of a short tuft of black hair that looked like a thin, furry hat, Douglass was naturally hairless, and because of this he looked perpetually fifteen despite being twenty-two. And despite being twenty-two, Douglass still lived with his father, his father’s girlfriend, and too many cats and dogs.
The item that he had brought back from the Hell House was a human heart, and the most interesting aspect of this particular heart was that it was still beating. After he showed it to me I asked young Douglass where he had obtained it, and he told me that he had taken it from a human body.
I then asked about the room he had gone into, hoping to gain some insight on what exactly had transpired – how he could have possibly ended up with such a thing. So he told me.
The most notable thing about the room, he said with eyes lit up in awe at the memory, was the string of red lights that framed the front window, casting an eerie red glow on everything, even the air itself. All of the other lights in the room – the shapely lamps and chandelier – were off and seemed unnecessary: via the red one could see all, albeit as tomato soup.
In this room he found a young woman curled up asleep in a large armchair, and it was from this young woman that he had taken the heart. Douglass had difficulty describing in fine detail the sight of the young woman as at the time she was completely red: her hair had been cut short, she wore what seemed like a long dress or form-fitting frock, and her position on the chair made her body seem lithe as a cat. But that was all he could tell at the time.
He told me that he had felt incredibly lucid when he reached his hand into her chest. He said that her skin, muscle and bones gave way like warm snow, and that there had been no resistance from any cords or wires when he pulled the still-beating heart from her body.
Not a single drop of blood was spilled. According to Douglass, the young woman did not even flinch upon the removal. She parted her lips to let out a solitary syllable and a look of concern flashed across her face, but it all seemed to stem from a none-too-agreeable dream rather than from what he referred to as the miracle theft.
As soon as the heart was secured in his hand, Douglass swiftly left the house and never looked back. He headed straight for his friend’s apartment building where the rest of the trio had been waiting for him; they greeted him with firm handshakes and patted him on the back when they learned of his success. Once comfortable, they begged him to describe his experience in as detailed a manner possible – which was possible for him even at that time, as Douglass Gorn could maintain a Buddhist calmness despite the situation.
He then produced the heart and, after sitting mystified for a while, his mates decided to contact the local paper – but only after confirming with Douglass that he had not actually killed anybody.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Uh, positive,’ Douglass replied. ‘Look: there’s no blood.’
Indeed, the organ was a pink rubbery thing, free of any glistening life liquids; the young men checked Douglass’s hands but found only a thin layer of sweat.
Nasser, the eldest of the boys by one year, was put in charge of public relations as he was the only one in the group who lived on his own – he had grown used to handling telephone calls and dealing face-to-face with various businesses, while the other young men were still very much timid in regards to the outside world.
They found the number for the paper on its official website and had Nasser dial it. A hush fell as a male voice answered the phone and a focused look came over Nasser’s face as he tried to arrange his sentences in a coherent manner. Douglass and Jordan, the other young man, listened carefully, mouths dry, while the Hell Heart throbbed in the middle of the table.
‘No, it’s not a prank. Of course not. We went into a Hell House. Well, not “we” – I mean one of us went, my friend Douglass. Hm? Douglass Gorn. G-O-R-N. Yes. Twenty-two. He’s here with me right now but doesn’t want to talk on the phone. Tomorrow? One sec.’ Nasser put his hand over the receiver and turned to Douglass. ‘They want to meet with you tomorrow,’ he explained.
Douglass said: ‘Uh.’
‘Is that all right? The guy wants to know what time is good for you; the earlier the better.’
Douglass said: ‘Uh. Twelve, I think.’
Nasser nodded and uncovered the receiver. ‘He says twelve. Noon. At the office? Yeah, I know how to get there. I’ll be going with Douglass as a kind of translator. Well, sometimes it’s hard to get him to say more than he wants to. Of course we’ll be bringing the heart; that’s a no-brainer. Okay, sir. No, thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Good night.’ Nasser closed the phone and everyone exhaled a sigh of relief.
‘Well, that was easy,’ Jordan said. ‘So I guess we can call it a night, eh?’
Nasser gave Jordan a look – the piercing kind that asks several different questions at once – and then shrugged. ‘Well, yeah, if you’re already that bored with the whole thing,’ he said.
‘Hey, man, it’s not like that. I had a lot of fun tonight. I mean, we had Douglass go into another dimension and come back with a perpetual motion device; that’s great – that kinda thing doesn’t happen every day and I appreciate it, I really do. I just need to call home before my ride falls asleep.’
‘Okay, okay. I was just joshing with you. Here.’ Nasser passed the phone over to Jordan, and Jordan punched the number for his house while entering the kitchen for privacy.
‘Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, thanks. Bye.’
When Jordan came back, Douglass had a grin on his face and a lined piece of paper in his hands.
‘So Douglass has a poem he would like to recite before you leave,’ Nasser explained. ‘Go ahead, Douglass.’
Douglass cleared his throat, then chuckled, and continued chuckling while reading from the lined paper.
Sadly, this poem has not survived in any physical form and none of the young men remember it all too clearly; the only bits that really stood out involved robots and human consciousness.
The reason why I have decided to document such a small detail is to establish the fact that Douglass Gorn showed sporadic signs of creativity, which might have some bearing on his account of his experience in the Hell House. However, I feel that I have seen enough to believe him, with evidence ranging from the still-beating heart to the appearance of a certain extraordinary character. But the latter comes later.
The next day, Nasser prepped Douglass for his meeting with the paper by treating him to lunch at a gyros stand. At the courtesy picnic table Douglass commented on the pronounced Caucasian attributes of the workers, wishing for a more authentically Greek experience; however, his niggling was soon muffled by the fresh sacrifice of lamb. Nasser then asked Douglass where he was keeping the heart and Douglass produced it from his inside jacket pocket.
‘I’ve been thinking about eating it,’ Douglass said flatly.
Nasser spit out some of his pita. ‘What?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t actually eat it. I was just wondering if, uh, if I could gain its power by eating it, like eternal life or something. Or maybe I’d have a heart attack.’ They laughed as Douglass returned the heart to his pocket. Douglass then noticed that the workers had been giving them strange looks, so after a thorough cleaning of their gyros-stained hands and faces they left for the newspaper office.
I have chosen to omit a detailed account of the effects of the gyros on the men’s bowels, much to their dismay; instead, we will simply jump ahead to the interview which took place in the office of a Mr. James Spaid. Mr. Spaid had sleepy eyes and a quirky, kind smile that curled at the corners perhaps a bit too much. Overall, the young men found that Mr. Spaid had an easy-going demeanour and always remained focused on the matter at hand – when he wasn’t making eye contact with the two young men he was either typing on a notebook or sipping his coffee. He was the most professional person that either of them had ever met, and possibly one of the most handsome as well (but I may be biased, as I had become well acquainted with James during my stay in town).
What follows is a selection of unpublished exchanges from their interview.
THE HOPPER POPPER: So, why did you enter the Hell House?
DOUGLASS GORN: Uh.
NASSER (LAST NAME WITHHELD): It was a Test of Manhood. We wanted to see who was the manliest and Douglass won out.
HP: You wouldn’t expect it to look at him.
NASSER: Well, you wouldn’t expect him to be a New Wave vocalist, either, but there you go.
HP: You’re a New Wave vocalist?
DOUGLASS: Er . . .
NASSER: Strictly karaoke.
HP: I must say that I’m impressed. So, how did you prepare yourself for the Hell House?
DOUGLASS: Oh. I just kind of, uh, pushed all of my fears and anxieties out of my mind. I guess you could say that I defenestrated reality. I figured that if I was going to do something important in my life then this might as well be it and I might as well do it right now. It was kind of, uh, a Zen moment. So I downed a glass of rum and went down to the Hell House.
NASSER: That’s not even the half of it: he also did some wicked karate kicks to jazz himself up. Wa-pow! Right, Douglass?
HP: You know karate?
DOUGLASS: Uh . . . no. But I did do some kicks. (Laughs.)
* * *
HP: So, did you knock first or did you just open the door?
DOUGLASS: I tried looking into the window first but there were these, uh, long drapes hiding everything. But yeah, I did try knocking first, and waited maybe thirty seconds before trying the doorknob; I opened it slowly and stuck my head in, but didn’t call out or anything. I figured nobody would be home. I mean Hell Home. I mean . . . Nobody ever really imagined anybody living in these houses, you know? We’ve, uh, what, had them for over a hundred years or so. As long as Hopper has been here, there have been these Hell Houses – that’s what everyone says, anyway.
HP: Yes, that’s true. And the young woman you mentioned before – how old would you say she was?
DOUGLASS: Twenty, twenty-one. Twenty-two. Uh. (Laughs.)
NASSER: Douglass doesn’t know many females. Right, Douglass?
DOUGLASS: There’s the lesbian clerk and Indian security guard at work.
NASSER: Well, I think James means women you know . . . intimately.
HP: No, I didn’t even ask.
* * *
HP: Okay, guys, we should start wrapping things up. I just have a couple more questions for you, if you don’t mind.
NASSER: Shoot.
HP: Do you believe you run the risk of being investigated by the police for openly admitting to entering somebody’s house without permission?
NASSER: What, is that a possibility?
DOUGLASS: Uh, I never even thought of that. I mean, it’s a Hell House – I mean, come on. (Laughs.)
HP: I’m not too sure of the legality of it, myself, but perhaps it’s something you guys should look into.
NASSER: Yeah, just in case, right? I don’t think Douglass could handle jail.
DOUGLASS: Uh, I don’t think anyone can handle jail. Otherwise it wouldn’t be jail. (Laughs.)
HP: (Laughs.) So, one last thing: may I see the heart?
DOUGLASS: Uh.
NASSER: Well, it’s probably the only real proof we have, so you might as well take a gander at it like we agreed. Got it, Douglass?
DOUGLASS: Okay. Yeah. Wait, wrong pocket. There.
HP: So all of this really did happen.
NASSER: Yeah.
DOUGLASS: It was messed up.
The only part of the interview that was published was Douglass’s last line – mostly because the article had to fight for space with various advertisements, but also because the editor felt that the whole thing came across as an unpolished joke. A photograph was taken and, after the paper hit the stands, Nasser and Douglass realised that it was the only picture that had ever been taken of them together; they wondered how that could have happened after seven years of knowing each other, and gave up wondering when they decided that it did not matter.
The photograph depicted Nasser and Douglass standing beside one another with the heart held up in Douglass’s hand: Douglass wore an expression of subdued excitement while Nasser was looking off camera at James Spaid, and there was a slight blur to the heart as though it had been caught in some sudden movement.
Douglass and Nasser quickly became the talk of town (which Jordan was perfectly fine with): local scientists displayed an eager interest in the heart, willing to pay them top tax dollar for its study; the imaginations of all of the children were set afire; the police, unsure of the legality of the situation, opened a case on the young men; and attractive females finally gave Douglass the attention he had always dreamed of – hoping for a glimmer of the Hell Heart, they turned him into a regular heartthrob.
Not accustomed to such attentions, the young men took to shutting themselves up indoors even more, only ever leaving their respective homes for necessities such as work or, in the case of Nasser, groceries, and weekly visits to Nasser’s for Douglass, a necessity for his sanity.
A month passed in this manner, during which Hopper’s tourism increased tenfold. Tourists would stake out spots on Douglass’s front lawn in the hopes of catching just one glimpse of the Man with Two Hearts, and such behaviour was practically condoned by the Mayor, who was thrilled by the economic boost. Hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfasts were all booked throughout winter, restaurants and diners were constantly jam-packed, and every store in town made more in a single month than they did in an entire year. Red sweaters and mugs were made up with Douglass’s likeness plastered all over them (and thus sold poorly), whilst candy hearts with hellish slogans on them were quickly mass-produced and readily consumed by both the tourists and the townsfolk themselves. After a hundred years, the Hell Houses were finally beginning to earn their keep.
It was during this apex of popularity that Douglass received his first visit from an apparition he had previously seen in a red tint. From what Douglass told me, he was playing a game on his computer late at night when he heard a light tapping coming from his window. By ‘late at night’ he meant the earliest hours of morning, so his head was not all there and he imagined that it must have been Nasser wanting to get in. He got up out of his chair without hesitation and peered through the window – which had been frosted over by ice and snow – and was greeted by a ghostly, girlish face grinning back at him. Douglass’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth a little, as though wanting to let out a trademark ‘Uh’, but otherwise was frozen over in his hunched-over spot.
The spectral female managed to lift up the window by pushing on the glass with her fingers; without the haze of the frosted window, Douglass could see her reddened cheeks, her brown hair, her grey eyes, and how absolutely flesh and blood she was. But while he could see his breath in the suddenly chilled air, he could not see hers. She placed the tip of her finger on his sweating forehead and pushed him aside so that she could climb into the room. He sat on the edge of his bed and watched helplessly as the intruding creature shut the window, rubbed the sides of her arms for warmth, looked around the room, and then focused her eyes on him.
‘Uh.’
‘Hullo,’ said the young lady. ‘My name is Frances. Did you steal my heart?’
‘Uh. I was planning on giving it back.’
‘Giving it back?’
‘When I was done with it.’
‘Done with it?’
‘Uh.’
‘I don’t know what you could have possibly done with it – it’s just a heart, after all. You weren’t planning on eating it, were you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘That’s a relief, then.’
She was standing with arms akimbo as she looked down at – or rather inspected – Douglass. Douglass was sweating up a storm now, especially after finally taking notice of Frances’ state of dress: a long orange frock coat with a green clover insignia, magenta shorts hiding underneath (Douglass looked closely from his perch), beat-up sneakers with white socks, and that was all. It was obvious to Douglass that she must be insane, or else she would never have come all the way from a Hell House wearing what she did; and despite being excited by the Hell Girl’s licentious appearance, Douglass revealed to me that he was far more excited about relaying his encounter to Nasser, as at the time he doubted that he would ever see her again, let alone become more familiar with her.
Frances sniffed the air subtly, like a cat, and followed her nose to the jacket hanging from the door by Douglass’s desk. She fished into its outside pockets, pulling out crumpled tissues, pens, bus tickets and bills, before finally discovering the jacket’s inside pocket (‘Sneaky, sneaky’), from which she pulled out the Hell Heart. Douglass could tell that the heart was beating faster than it ever had before. Frances then faced away from Douglass, stating that she was going to attempt putting it back in, and Douglass admired her legs as she fidgeted for several minutes.
‘It’s not going back in,’ she said flatly, and her body seemed to stop moving altogether.
‘How does it go in?’
She turned back to face him with some great anxiety in her eyes. ‘I don’t know!’ she blurted, and then collapsed onto Douglass’s desk chair, holding her heart with one hand and her head with the other. ‘I have an idea but I don’t want to risk it,’ she said after a moment passed.
‘What is it?’
Frances merely stared off into space. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I’m sure there are options other than eating it,’ she said to herself. She spun around on the desk chair and looked over Douglass’s computer desk, picking up and dropping all of the small objects scattered across it.
One of the items she picked up was Douglass’s wallet, which she gave a thorough inspection. ‘Hullo, Douglass Gorn,’ she said to Douglass after flipping through his bank card, health card, social insurance number and birth certificate, amongst other assorted bits of identification. ‘Looks like whoever created you decided not to give you a middle name.’
‘Uh, my mother?’
‘Sure. Hey, Douglass, how did you steal my heart in the first place?’
‘Oh. I, uh, just took it out.’
Frances tilted her head. ‘Just took it out? Can you show me?’
‘Uh. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.’
‘Oh, are you broken?’
‘Uh.’ Douglass let loose a whinnying laugh.
‘Just come over here and show me,’ Frances demanded.
Douglass shook the dementia out of his head. ‘Okay,’ he acquiesced, and got up off the bed to hobble towards her. Frances stood up straight in the seat and looked up expectantly at Douglass, who was wiping gobs of sweat from his brow. ‘Okay, so I did it like this,’ he said, diving his flattened hand into her body. His hand pierced through her frock coat and chest – fabric, skin, fat, blood and bones – as though none of them were really there. Frances did not even wince.
‘So, just like that?’
‘Yeah. Just like that. Uh.’ Douglass quickly retracted his hand, miraculously not leaving a single mark on her body.
‘Here, try it again but with the heart this time. Maybe you can put it back in.’ She offered him her heart, and he took it timidly before pressing it against her chest. Nothing happened.
Frances reclaimed her heart and curled up with it in the chair, petting it as she gazed down at the beating thing with a sad, almost motherly expression. ‘How am I supposed to get it back?’ she asked the molecules in the air around her.
‘Uh, I have a question, if you don’t mind,’ Douglass artlessly interjected. ‘How are you, uh, you know . . . alive? Without your heart, I mean.’
Frances scrutinised him. ‘There are over six billion people in the world. How many of them do you suppose are heartless? Are they still living, or what?’
Douglass thought about this for a moment. ‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ he allowed. ‘But only barely.’
‘But only barely. What am I? I have my heart right in front of me, but you stole it and now I can’t put it back in. Now I have no heart. What am I supposed to do?’
‘Uh.’
‘Wait, what time it is? I need get back to my house before morning!’ She shot up out of the chair, her heart bouncing onto the floor and rolling in an arc before finally settling under Douglass’s bed.
‘I’ll see you here tomorrow night, Douglass,’ said Frances to the awkward young man, sealing the rendezvous with a kiss. ‘I’ll leave my heart with you for now – I know how important it is for you at the moment and it’s not like I can do anything with it the way it is. Oh, golly, just look at my kindness.’
She climbed through the window and said adieu before disappearing into some faraway bushes in Douglass’s backyard, but not quite managing to disappear completely as Douglass caught sight of the Hell Girl struggling to pull her body over the property’s tall wooden fence, which was followed by a mild thump when she finally vanished over it.
Sticking his head out, Douglass noticed how very white the night sky had become. He then shut the window, shivered, and went to his computer desk so that he could relate to Nasser over an instant messenger everything that had just happened to him.
A lot of this sounds impossible, and perhaps it is, but as I have personally met the young lady known as Frances, I believe in what Douglass has told me and will defend it as the truth.
Frances continued to visit Douglass every night in winter while the Hell Houses were around. Douglass gradually grew more comfortable around the young lady and soon enough the pair could be considered an item. Thanks to Frances, Douglass was treated to sexual intercourse for the first time in his life; however, Douglass was very shy about elaborating such intimate details and, as such, my notes concerning his sexual encounters with the young lady are skimpy at best.
It was during Hopper’s peak in popularity that I arrived in town, having learned of the Hell Houses and the heart through a mutual friend of Mr. James Spaid and myself. That friend is a Mr. David Knight, and he was emailed the original article on the Hell Heart by Mr. Spaid, which David then passed on to me; as I had received it during a lull in my adventuring, the slim news item managed to pique my interest. I asked David if he would be so kind as to supply me with Mr. Spaid’s email address, and from there James and I entered into a correspondence. I made plans to leave for Hopper right away.
James contacted Douglass and Nasser on my behalf and arranged for a meeting to take place between myself and the two young men on the day following my arrival; I wanted to spend the first night on my own, to see the Hell Houses with my own eyes.
For whatever reason I had been expecting something far more ‘cute’ than what the town presented me with – undeniably unsettling and strikingly demonic red embassies from Hell. Not once during my stay did I venture any closer to the Hell Houses than what the sidewalks, with their safe distances, allowed. I was horrified. I could only imagine how the neighbouring households felt, being forced to live beside such mysterious buildings with no way out. I suppose they merely coexisted through blind acceptance and silence. In any case, after that night I had absolutely no trouble in believing that Douglass Gorn was the first person to ever enter a Hell House.
The next day I met with Douglass and Nasser in the latter’s apartment. I explained that it was my intention to write an article on them for a small magazine, and they told me that James had already explained the situation to them over the phone. We sat around a small table drinking pop and blueberry juice, the only two choices of drink as Nasser did not carry coffee. I found the apartment interesting for its juxtaposition of old lady knickknacks and cult film posters, which Nasser seemed to be proud of. A musique concrète recording played lightly in the background.
This was when Douglass – worried about losing his fifteen minutes of fame, and also wishing to get everything over with – decided to divulge everything to me, a complete stranger at that time. After detailing his account of the Test of Manhood, he went on to cover the interview with James, after which he showed me the heart. I held it in my hands and it was one of the most miraculous sensations I had ever experienced, akin to holding a pregnant woman’s belly while the baby is restless; I held it to my ear and heard the fragility of human life magnified six billion times over.
Douglass then told me about Frances and I asked if he could arrange a meeting with her. He told me that he would see, and I gave the two young men my email address and my phone number at the hotel I was staying. The next day I received an email from Douglass stating that a meeting had been set for 9 o’clock that night, and listed in the email was a pair of reasonable conditions:
1. No photographs.
2. No stalking.
Also in the email was Douglass’s home address and I arrived there ten minutes early so that I could get a good feel of Douglass’s living environment. Douglass’s father – a meek, worn man about ten years my senior – let me into the house, and I was immediately greeted by the scent of cat urine. A slightly overweight woman was sitting in the living room watching a glowing tv and barely turned her head to acknowledge me. When Mr. Gorn told her that I worked for a magazine and was doing an article on Douglass, the chubby woman nodded distractedly and that was it. I was then led to Douglass’s room, and Mr. Gorn shook my hand twice before leaving me to my session with his son. I knocked on Douglass’s door and Douglass greeted me graciously, offering a seat on his bed; it was quite awkward for a few minutes, but all of that ended when Frances came.
There was a punctual knock at Douglass’s window and Frances climbed into the room after Douglass slid up the glass for her. She was wearing an orange evening dress with a pink clover insignia sewn near the hem by her left calf and her hair was neatly brushed. She greeted me in a very formal manner and admitted that she had dressed herself up just for the meeting. In a reversal of roles she kissed my hand.
She was very excited about being in a magazine and offered me some pictures of herself, which turned out to be doodles of her that had been done in pen by Douglass. I asked her why she did not wish to be photographed and she told me that she did not wish for her soul to be taken away, that having her heart stolen had been bad enough. Given the circumstances I had no choice but to agree with her.
Frances mostly spoke in nonsense and would change the subject whenever I asked about her personal history. When the topic of the heart finally fully entered into the conversation I jokingly suggested to Frances that she take Douglass’s heart, as he had a spare. Her face lit up at the thought and she said that it was a very good idea; I could tell that she could not wait to try it, and sure enough she was now bending over Douglass with a hungry look on her face.
Douglass put to use that Buddhist calmness I had mentioned earlier and did not appear to take the sudden informal ritual seriously; that is, he did not take it seriously until Frances slipped her hand into his chest and pulled out his heart. All three of us were shocked, absolutely shocked, and it took a moment for us to realise just how incredibly shocked we were. Douglass’s heart was as clean and throbbing as Frances’. Frances, in a quick fit of confusion, took her heart and jammed it into Douglass.
He breathed. Douglass returned the favour by placing his heart inside of Frances. She breathed.
I breathed heavily and then breathed a sigh of relief when it looked like all was well. As I was considered The Adult in the room, and thus the automatic authority on everything, the pair asked me to check their health -- their pulses, their temperatures, their breathing regularity. I assured them that they were fine.
We all sat together in silence, unsure of how anyone else felt. So I asked how they felt. Frances suddenly brightened, an enormous grin plastered across her face. She told us how happy she was to have a heart again. She then wrapped her arms around Douglass and kissed him fully on the lips; never before had I seen a young man blush so much as Douglass did then. After the rapturous embrace Frances returned to her chair and swivelled side-to-side, back-and-forth in a continuous display of happiness.
It was then that Douglass turned to me with a mischievous smile and said that it was a good thing there were people like us to save the world. At the time I did not understand what he meant by it, but now I think I do.
Frances left before I did and refused to be walked home. Once I was finished documenting the meeting in my notebook I said goodbye to Douglass, who was in a daze. I said goodbye again and he nodded, producing a small, strange grunt of affirmation.
I know that all of this is true because I saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears and felt it with my own fingers.
As I was leaving Douglass’s home I was stopped by his father in the hallway and he asked me what Douglass and I had been talking about. I told him that we had been discussing Douglass’s future, and his father said that that was good, that the boy should have some idea of his future. I found it odd that Mr. Gorn would consider a twenty-two year-old man to be a boy, but did not bring this to his attention out of professional politeness. Instead I asked Douglass’s father if he knew the names of his neighbours, and he said no, that he did not. He asked me why I asked and I told him that I had been merely wondering.
After that winter there was one less Hell House in Hopper, and Douglass never heard from Frances again. Douglass told everyone that he had lost the Hell Heart and they believed him; they said that that was something he would do, and they left it at that.
I returned to my city two days after my night with Douglass and Frances, and there I volunteered for the winter festival where I met some interesting people and filled all of the children with joy. Everyone is inherently alone, but at least we have other people to help us forget that.